Manchester United have unveiled plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium, but where will it rank among the biggest football stadiums in the world?
Minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been vocal about his desire to build a new state-of-the-art stadium, which could become the second largest in Europe.
The current plan is to build the new stadium next to Old Trafford, although it hasn’t been disclosed what will happen to that ground moving forward.
While most stadiums of this magnitude could take up to 10 years to build, architect Lord Norman Foster has claimed that it could be done within five years.
“This has to be one of the most exciting projects in the world today,” Foster told the club website.
“It starts with making something which is so intense, it brings you close to the pitch, acoustically it cultivates the roar.
“Moving away from the stadium, it’s not a fortress surrounded by a sea of cars, it’s open. It’s contained by an umbrella which harvests solar energy, rain water but is protected. It encloses arguably the largest public space in the world.
“There’s the three masts, the trident. Visible from 40km away, 200m high. This becomes a global destination.
“Normally a stadium will take 10 years to build, we take five.”
The new stadium will reportedly cost around £2billion to build and the club is yet to announce how they plan to pay for the project.
There are also plans in place to regenerate the wider Old Trafford area. It’s been estimated that the regeneration project could create 92,000 new jobs, along with attracting an additional 1.8 million visitors to the area each year.
“Today marks the start of an incredibly exciting journey to the delivery of what will be the world’s greatest stadium,” Ratcliffe said.
“Our current stadium has served us brilliantly for the past 115 years but it has fallen behind the arenas in world sport.
“I think we may well finish up with the most iconic football stadium in the world.”
With the tallest mast standing at 200m high, the new stadium will be visible from the Peak District and even the outskirts of Liverpool.
Within Europe, it will only be second to Barcelona’s Camp Nou in terms of capacity. In world football, the stadium is set to rank as the sixth biggest ground on the globe.
To illustrate just how big the new Man United ground will be, here is where it would rank among the 20 biggest football stadiums in the world, ranked by capacity:
1. Rungrado 1st of May Stadium, North Korea = 114,000
2. Michigan Stadium, United States = 107,601
3. Camp Nou, Spain = 105,000
4. Ohio Stadium, United States = 102,780
5. Melbourne Cricket Ground, Austrailia = 100,024
6. New Trafford, England = 100,000
7. FNB Stadium, South Africa = 94,736
8. New Administrative Capital Stadium, Egypt = 93,940
9. Rose Bowl Stadium, United States = 92,800
10. Cotton Bowl Stadium, United States = 92,100
11. Wembley Stadium, England = 90,000
12. Lusail Stadium, Qatar = 88,966
13. Estadio Azteca, Mexico = 87,523
14. Bukit Jalil National Stadium, Malaysia = 87,411
15. Borg El-Arab Stadium, Egypt = 86,000
16. Santiago Bernabeu, Spain = 85,000
17. Estadio Mâs Monumental, Argentina = 84,567
18. Stadium Australia, Austrailia = 83,500
19. MetLife Stadium, United States = 82,500
20. Croke Park, Ireland = 82,300
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