Italian Soccer

Here is an interesting article on the state of Italian soccer, and it doesn't even mention the match fixing scandal.

I think that article could have been written 25 years ago about England, but it not longer applies here, as the author points out. I started thinking about how cool it would be if an English team hired that American firm that designed all the new baseball stadiums to come over and design a football stadium. Then I realized it wouldn't really work. The thing that's great about the baseball stadiums - the facilities, the placement in relation to the city, the fascinating quirks - all would get in the way of the singular purpose that English football stadiums need to fill. When the Brits go to a football game, they are there to watch the game only. No one gets up until halftime, when there is a mass exodus for the bathrooms and the concessions. Then everyone is back in their seats until the game is over. Then everyone leaves at once.

A football stadium needs only a few things:

• Good sightlines
• Getting the crowd as close to the field as possible
• Good entry and exit passages for crowd flow
• Toilets, decent seats, a few concession stands, a decent scoreboard