My trip to the Emirates Arsenal Stadium

Arsenal is my favourite football team (British football not American). They are one of the best teams in the world. Recently I went to the Emirates Arsenal stadium. These are some facts about Arsenal and the stadium.

Fact One

There are two stadiums. Arsenal moved from their old stadium in Highbury to a new stadium because they knew they wouldn’t make enough money from ticket sales and advertisements to buy the best players they needed to win. This is because the old stadium was a lot smaller. The new stadium is now the 4^th largest in England. Emirates (an airline company) paid £100 million for naming rights for the new stadium.

Fact Two

The cost to build the new stadium was £390 million.

Fact Three

It took over 6 million person hours to build the stadium (we are using person hours instead of man hours because women helped build the stadium too!).

Fact Four

It took 3 months for 30 people to put up all the seats in the stadium.

Fact Five

Speaking of seats, they hire a hawk to fly around the stadium two times a week to scare all the pigeons away so they won’t poop on the seats.

Fact Six

The Arsenal changing rooms are really fancy. They have things like ice baths and massage tables, and individual changing booths for each of the players.

Fact Seven

By comparison, the away teams changing rooms are very plain and simple. This gives Arsenal a psychological advantage because it makes them feel like winners.

Fact Eight

For a similar reason, the stadium is perfectly designed so that all the crowd noise travels down to the pitch. This means the Arsenal players hear all the cheering and chanting from their fans.

Fact Nine

The name Arsenal comes from the original members of the football team back in 1886. They all worked together at the arsenal ammunition factory making guns.