Signal Iduna Park — Attraction in Dortmund

THE YELLOW WALL OF THE RUHR Attacking football and low ticket prices create one of the highest average attendances in Europe – this is a popular team. Jürgen Klopp’s arrival at Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2008 heralded an upswing for the great German club. A Champions League final in 2013 and two Bundesliga titles under the charismatic Klopp made the world pay attention once more to Dortmund, a club that had been in the doldrums for a while. Dortmund’s earlier golden era reached its peak with victory in the 1997 Champions League sinal, with a lob from Lars Ricken over the head of the Juventus goalkeeper Angelo Peruzzi. This glorious period was followed by economic crisis, and despite winning the Bundesliga shield of 2002 the club suffered financial hardships. They were eventually saved by, among other measures, a loan from their rivals Bayern Munich. To survive in the long term, Dortmund needed to rethink and they now started to take a chance on homegrown talents. This policy led to the production of talented players such as Mario Götze, Marcel Schmelzer and Nuri Sahin, which led to Champions League success in 2013. The club’s simple yellow-and-black roundel badge carries the year the club was founded and the legend BVB – by which the team are commonly known in Germany). BVB stands for Ballspielverein Borussia (literally ‘Ball games club Borussia’), although some fans insist it stands for Borussen vom Borsigplatz, or ‘Borussia fans from Borsigplatz’, after the city square where the club’s founders drank the local Borussia beer at the restaurant Zum Wildschütz.

CLUB: Ballspielverein Borussia 09 Dortmund NICKNAMES: Die Borussen, Die Schwarzgelben (the Black and Yellows) & Der BVB FOUNDED: 1909 STADIUM: Westfalenstadion (Signal Iduna Park), (81,359 capacity) HISTORIC PLAYERS: Michael Zorc, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Matthias Sammer, Mario Götze and Marco Reus

Dortmund’s Klaus Ackermann wearing the unpopular Samson tobacco-influenced club...

Eightyone thousand three hundred and sixty-five

That's how many fans fit into SIGNAL IDUNA PARK, Germany's largest football stadium

If you had told the people of Dortmund 30 years ago about a football temple with a capacity of over 80,000 in their city centre - a stadium boasting a glass façade, undersoil heating and the largest stand in Europe - they would have all smiled tolerantly at such a fanciful notion. Nowadays, though, the SIGNAL IDUNA PARK on Strobelallee is Germany’s largest football stadium with a capacity of exactly 81,365. The fact that the outlay for Borussia’s enormous arena almost crippled the club financially is another matter entirely – and one which was fortunately resolved at the end of May 2006.

The venue located on Strobelallee – known as “the temple” by fans and regularly dubbed “the most beautiful stadium in the country” by the press, professionals and VIPS alike – has been one of the largest and most comfortable stadia in Europe since the third expansion phase was completed. A long process of construction and conversion reached its peak when the stadium was renovated in the run-up the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Yet works are carried out on the stadium every summer, with BVB investing some ten million Euro in the renovation of the now-ageing arena in 2012 alone: both the grass and the drainage in the southern half of the pitch were replaced; the south stand was strengthened by support measures; concrete sanitation measures were implemented in the northern part; seven new VIP boxes were added in the part of the east stand where the press area used to be; new cameras armed with impressive digital technology provide greater security, with the away area and the lower tier of the south stand in particular under increased observation; and in the year before new scoreboards...

The story behind the Signal Iduna Park Borussia Dortmund’s Signal Iduna Park home emits an enchanting feeling to constantly draw in capacity crowds of over 81,000. Borussia Dortmund’s Signal Iduna Park home emits an enchanting feeling to constantly draw in capacity crowds of over 81,000. The Signal Iduna Park is a monster of a stadium. Borussia Dortmund’s 81,365-capacity home is one of the world’s most iconic grounds, boasting the highest average attendance in Europe and providing an atmosphere envied across sports.

Prior to the construction of the Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund’s home was the Stadion Rote Erde. The stadium had an eventual capacity of 42,000 spectators in the 1960s, but this was deemed insufficient as BVB became the first German team to lift a European trophy (the 1966 Cup Winners’ Cup) and interest spiked. Plans had been made prior to that for a new stadium but neither the city of Dortmund nor the German government were willing to help finance the project.

Borussia’s big break, however, came in 1971 when Cologne pulled out of hosting the 1974 FIFA World Cup and the funds were instead given to Dortmund. A 54,000-capacity stadium – the Westfalenstadion – was constructed within three years next to the Rote Erde. It hosted four matches during the tournament but remarkably it would be two years before Bundesliga football was seen at Dortmund’s new home – but Borussia were...