'World's greatest football stadium' with 80,000 seats is half-built 16 years on

31 May 2023 , 08:26

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The Nou Mestalla remains as a shell after building work was halted (Image: Getty Images)

A number of iconic stadiums in Spain look set to look slightly different over the next few years.

Barcelona have temporarily moved out of the Camp Nou whilst it undergoes major renovation work. Meanwhile, Real Madrid ’s Santiago Bernabeu has also had work done to it as it attempts to keep pace with the most glittering arenas in world football.

One club in particular has had plans in place for a long time to move - Valencia. The six-time Spanish champions have made the Mestalla their home since 1923. It had an initial capacity of 17,000 and has gradually grown and now sits at just under 50,000 seats. It is now the eighth-largest stadium in Spain.

Despite that, there are long-running plans for Valencia to move ground. The club's former president Juan Soler announced plans for a new stadium back in November 2006.

Construction on the new stadium, named Nou Mestalla, began in the following August with an impressive concrete structure being erected. The building of the new 80,000 capacity arena was due to be completed in the summer of 2009 - ready for the 2009/10 season.

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The club failed to meet that deadline due to financial problems. Work was very swiftly brought to an end on the plan which has been dubbed "the world's greatest football stadium".

'World's greatest football stadium' with 80,000 seats is half-built 16 years on

The Nou Mestalla remains unfinished 16 years after the project was launched (Getty Images)

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The exterior shell of the stadium was then left to rot. Valencia attempted to find fresh funding in order to revive the project.

The financing of the Nou Mestalla was dependent on selling their previous stadium but the chaos of the property market made it near-impossible to find a buyer. They then attempted to agree a £90m loan with the banks but a deal fell through.

Disaster also struck as two workers were killed at the site as scaffolding collapsed and fell 25 feet. A further two men died of their injuries over the following days.

The project has shown little sign of getting back on track over recent years. Valencia claimed that a deal had been struck with Bankia, a Spanish financial institution, to complete the ground in December 2011.

That deal also fell through in what was the latest in a long line of blows. Since then, the project has been continually altered.

Valencia worked with architecture company Fenwick Iribarren, who came up with a modified, less ambitious project, which would have seen the capacity reduced to 61,000. Meanwhile, talks with the local council generated fresh hope, whilst there was also another plan to renew the project, with the new stadium having an even smaller capacity than their old.

Valencia do not appear likely to be playing at the Nou Mestalla any time soon (Getty Images)

However, work is still yet to get underway and it appears unlikely that it will any time soon. Those ongoing frustrations have been on show on the pitch too.

Valencia have finished in the top-four on just three occasions in each of the last ten seasons, whilst they sit 15th in LaLiga ahead of their final match of the season and are still under threat of relegation.