8 | MANE RAIL & INFRASTRUCTURE | NOVEMBER 2018
NEW SPURS STADIUM GOES TO EXTRA TIME
WILL THERE BE ANY PENALTIES TO FACE FOR THE DELAY?
”To dare is to do” is the club slogan for Tottenham Hotspurs and they may have landed themselves in trouble for doing just that. When work began on a new stadium for the North London based Premier League side, they were told they would only need to move out for one season whilst building work was going on.
They dared to go ahead with the new stadium, even with the designs being changed slightly last minute to accommodate more fans, and here is where they are now.
A hard and hearty goodbye it was in May 2017 when Tottenham Hotspurs said goodbye to their White Hart Lane stadium in its then current format. The football ground had been updated over the years but had reached its full capacity, meaning a new stadium was their only option in order to grow the club and host more of their fans on a match day.
The project began almost straight away once the Premier League season finished. The club were told it would only take 12 months to complete construction on the new stadium before they would be able to host matches again in North London.
One year was a tight deadline. local rivals Arsenal moved into their current home, The Emirates Stadium in 2006, a ground which took just short of two-and-a-half years to build. Eager to trump their rivals, Spurs announced that their stadium will have a similar capacity, but narrowly-beat it. Whilst the Emirates Stadium hold 60,000, the new Tottenham ground should be able to hold 62,000.
Work on the new White Hart Lane stadium started in mid-2015 with the project starting with outer stadium sites and surrounding areas before slowly building towards the back of the old White Hart Lane stadium, where work would continue once the old stadium had been demolished.
Originally scheduled to be open for the beginning of the current Premier League season which began in August, the club started taking orders on season tickets with Tottenham fans clamoring to see their team at their new home.
Two months into the season and the ground has been further delayed with the expected completion date being pushed back every other week.
Having originally only been scheduled to play at the national stadium in Wembley for only one year, it is perhaps poetic that just as Spurs new stadium is delayed, they play their home games at a ground which too suffered major delays.
In 2002, the iconic layout of Wembley Stadium with its famous twin towers was demolished with a new-look Wembley scheduled to open in time for the 2005 FA Cup final. The stadium wouldn’t be ready for May 2005, and the completion date would keep getting pushed back. Ultimately, the new-look Wembley Stadium opened in March 2007. The first FIFA sanctioned match being a 3-3 draw between England under 21s and Italy under 21s.
Now into their second season away from White Hart Lane, the London club have even taken to playing games outside of London. With Wembley being pre-occupied with its preparations for hosting an NFL game for
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