The Camp Nou,often erroneously called the Nou Camp (in both Spanish and English) is a football stadium in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
The stadium has been the home of Futbol Club
Barcelona since its construction in 1957. It is a UEFA 5-star rated stadium, and has hosted
numerous international matches at senior level, and
UEFA Champions League finals, the most recent being in 1999. It has a
capacity of
98,787, making it the largest stadium in Europe, and the tenth largest in the world. Its official name was Estadi del FC Barcelona
(FC Barcelona Stadium) until 2000, when the club
membership voted to change the official name to the popular nickname, Camp Nou.
Across Camp Nou is the Palau Blaugrana, the stadium
for indoor sports and adjacent is the Ice Rink, the stadium for
ice-based sports.
Just behind the complex is the Mini Estadi, the
stadium where Futbol Club Barcelona Atlètic, Barça's reserve team, play
their games.
By the early 1950s, Barcelona had outgrown its old stadium, Camp de Les Corts
which had held 60,000 supporters. The Camp Nou, built
between 1954 and
1957, was designed by architects Francesc Mitjans-Miró, Lorenzo García
Barbon, and Josep Soteras Mauri.
FC Barcelona won their first game at
Camp Nou in impressive fashion, a 4–2 victory against Legia Warsaw, with Eulogio Martínez
scoring the first goal at the new stadium. Over
90,000 fans were present at this momentous occasion. The stadium
capacity has varied,
opening at 106,146, but growing to 121,749 for the
1982 FIFA World Cup. With the outlawing of standing sections at the
stadium in the
late 1990s, its capacity settled to just below
99,000.
