Team: Napoli
Capacity: 60,240
Built: 1959
City: Napoli
The San Paolo is another one of Italy’s great stadiums that is shrouded in nostalgia and drama. It has seen the highs and lows of football in Italy hosting Napoli games from Serie A to Serie C. Despite the faltering performances of the team over the years there has always been an ever present Napoli crowd in the San Paolo cheering the team on.
Even in Serie C they drew a crowd of 51,000 which stands as a record. Last term as Napoli made their way into the Champions League, the San Paolo was often near full capacity. One thing about this structure that is particularly nostalgic is that it is heavily linked with Maradona at his best. The great Argentine plied his trade here for seven years and was nothing short of a demi god to the population of Naples. Even when he infamously asked the Neapolitans to support Argentina instead of Italy in the 1990 World Cup Semi final they still loved him. An interesting fact is that Italian law was the only thing preventing the renaming of the Stadium after Diego Maradona, as he needed to have been dead for ten years first.
The atmosphere in the stadium on match day is electric, the Neapolitans as a people are passionate to the extreme and lead by the Ultras they make the third biggest stadium in Italy a cauldron on match day.
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