PSV Eindhoven plans to expand their stadium!

By: Firezen | November 13th, 2009

With international break going on, and news about respective players playing for their country covered by every single active blog on the worldcupblog.org, I thought it be nice if I just moved away from the congested topic and throw in something thrilling.

It be nice if I gave a brief history of the beloved stadium of ours to start the entry off with.

The Philips Stadion as we know now, has been hanging around the blocks of Eindhoven since 1913. However, despite still being in the same location, the stadium has evolved with the team over the years. There are different numbers offered for the original stadium size up until 1933, ranging from 300 – 3000. But imagine, even if it was 3000, it’s still very very small compared to the current stadium, or even stadiums within the Eredivisie. The stadium subsequently was expanded to 18,000 seats in 1941.

As with most football stadiums across Europe, the bad news was that the majority of them were wrecked during World War II. The good news was that the majority of them had “excuses” to expand in size and renovate. This meant that the stadium expanded to 22,000. Surprisingly, it was only until 2002, did the stadium finally “settle” with it’s “final” seat capacity – 35,119.

So why plans to expand all of a sudden. Well PSV has had plans to expand for quite some time, but the board never really settled to materialise those plans. It was never really an urgent priority anyways, because stadium expansion is expensive. However, with Netherlands and Belgium trying to emulate their experience in hosting the Euro and metamorphosise that into a World Cup for 2018, opportunities open up.

According to FIFA, 44,000 is apparently the number needed for seat capacity if Philips Stadion are to be one of the hosting stadiums for the event. The major of Eindhoven wants the expansion to happen, as… well aren’t the reasons obvious? The money, the fame, the entertainment for the masses. Also, with the government actively providing favourable mortgage terms and all kinds of lovely financial incentives, PSV in return have to contribute more to the community.

“If Ibrahim Afellay went to the poor districts for promotion/participation of social projects, the effect would be much greater than if the mayor himself visited. PSV is in everyone’s mind, so it is logical if we contributed as much as we can through our active involvement with the community” was what Jan Rekers, our PSV general manager said.

It’s great for PSV, because now, the estimate costs of 50 million euros would be expected to be much easier to deal with, since the whole city is behind the plans. Also, the stadium is almost nearly full house every match, so expansions would accomodate all the fans who really want to show up and watch the home team play. Concert sizes can be larger, and the atmosphere would change immensely during home games. Plus, a stadium expansion would probably boost our chances to host another UEFA competition finals after our last UEFA cup final hosted in 2006.