Estadio Jose Alvalade

Estadio Jose Alvalade is a football stadium in Lisbon, Portugal, home of Sporting Clube de Portugal. It was built adjacent to the site of the older stadium. The stadium is named after Jose Alvalade, the founder and first club member of Sporting CP in the early twentieth century.

History

The stadium is the center of a complex called Alvalade XXI, designed by Portuguese architect Tomas Taveira, which includes a mall called Alvalaxia with a 12-screen movie theater, a health club, the club's museum, a sports pavilion, a clinic, and an office building. The complex cost a total of €162 million, with the stadium accounting with almost €121 million. On the exterior, the stadium features multi-coloured tiles. Seats are also arranged in a random-looking colour mix.

It was classified by UEFA as a 4-star stadium, enabling it to host finals of major UEFA events. The stadium – originally projected to hold only 40,000 spectators at any given time – has a capacity of 50,095 and was acoustically engineered as a venue for major concerts. The stadium has also a total of 1,315 underground parking spaces, including 30 for disabled spectators.

The new stadium official opening was on 6 August 2003 when Sporting played and beat Manchester United 3–1. The stadium hosted five matches of UEFA Euro 2004, one of them being the semi-final between Portugal and the Netherlands, which Portugal won 2–1. In May 2005, the stadium was upgraded to 5-star stadium status by UEFA, the same month it hosted the 2005 UEFA Cup Final between Sporting and CSKA Moscow, which CSKA Moscow won 3–1.

After years of coping with a poor playing surface, the Sporting board initially decided to install synthetic turf for the 2011-12 season, but this decision was later abandoned for the use of artificial lighting.

It hosted quarter-finals and semi-finals matches during the 2019-20 UEFA Champions League.

This page also has a version in other languages :  Жозе Алваладе Стадион (russian)