LALIGA
LaLiga football grounds: A rough guide (part III)
From Athletic Club to Villarreal, part three of our look at all twenty clubs in the Spanish top flight and a look at their respective football grounds.
Part III of our look at all 20 LaLiga team's stadia takes in Deportivo la Coruña. SD Eibar, RCD Espayol and Granada CF.
Deportivo la Coruña
Inaugurated in October 1944 with home game against Valencia, Riazor has a capacity of 32.912. The picturesque ground overlooks neighbouring Riazor beach and has gone through many renovation phases to meet UEFA requirements. Riazor was the home ground to the Galician regional team and hosted the Spain versus Belgium friendly in 2009.
SD Eibar
Being 16 times smaller than Spanish football's biggest ground Camp Nou, Ipurúa boasts the smallest capacity in LaLiga with space for 6.285 fans following recent expansion work. The ground originally opened on September 14 1947 and following recent work now meets with UEFA stadia requirements. Arguable one of Spanish football's most picturesque settings for a football with the ground being "locked" amid the rolling Basque hills.
RCD Espanyol
One of the newer grounds in LaLiga, the RCD Stadium (formerly Power-8 Stadium) opened it's doors on August 2, 2009 and boasts a 41.000 capacity. After leaving their old Sarria home , Espanyol were tenants at the Olympic stadium in Montjuic as construction work was carried out on their new home in the Cornella-El Prat area of the Catalan capital. The new stadium has been awarded four stars by UEFA.
Granada CF
The Nuevo Estadio de Los Cármenes is a local council owned ground with a current maximum capacity for 22.094 spectators. The stadium gets it's name from a local style of construction known as ‘Carmen’, which reflects the houses and gardens constructed in the Albayzín area of the Andalusian city. The old "Los Cármenes" stadium was sold off by the club to liquidate debts the club had amassed in the 1930's.
