Lahti Stadium
Tuesday 1 July 2008
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Lahti Stadium (©Football Association of Finland/Jussi Eskola)
Club: FC Lahti
Capacity: 8,000
Matches: Three group matches, quarter-final
Distance from Helsinki: 100km
Population: 100,000
Website: www.lahti.fi
The stadium
The Lahti Stadium, built in 1981 and revamped for the 2003 FIFA U-17 World Cup, is not only used for football but also athletics, lacrosse, cross-country skiing and biathlon, in which it has staged the world championship three times. The record attendance for a football match is 13,533 for a 1988 fixture between FC Kuusysi and FC Reipas, the two teams that merged to form FC Lahti in 1996. For the tournament the arena is being turned into an 8,000-seater stadium.
The club
Kuusysi and Reipas put a long-held rivalry aside when they combined, and took two years to earn promotion to the top division, where they have remained ever since. However, while Kuusysi won five league titles and Reipas two, Lahti only finished in the top three for the first time in 2008, though they did lift the League Cup the year before.
The city
Given city status in 1905, Lahti has a population of around 100,000 and is famed as a major sporting centre. As well as football and winter sports events, the city staged the 1997 World Games, a quadrennial event for disciplines not included in the Olympics.
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