Can New Football Stadiums Ever Feel Like Home?

After all, every new stadium begins life with its best possible atmosphere already illustrated – but nobody ever renders the queue for the toilets.

The Generali Stadium is no exception. It has 71,500 seats, architecture by Foster + Partners and MANICA, and promises to “carry the spirit of San Siro” into a new home, with construction expected to start in 2028. It’s a compelling pitch, but it’s also asking a building to inherit something its predecessor spent generations accumulating. Tough gig.

I should declare an interest. I’m a Portsmouth fan, and most weeks I get to go to Fratton Park, which is old in the way only a very old stadium can be. It’s old and, let’s be honest, it’s shit.

It has all the notes you’d expect: the odd sightline, the weird smell, the sense that nobody has ever been entirely in charge of the plumbing. And I love it, completely and without any real argument to offer in its defence. That’s because it’s where everything happened: it’s where we won the league, where we first got promoted to the Premier League and (most importantly) where we beat Southampton 4-1.

It’s even where we played AC Milan in Europe, which, given the news from Milan, feels like the universe making a point. Now they’re off to build a 71,500-seater with a roof. I wish them well, and I don’t think the building is the thing they’ll struggle to get right. That’s the tricky bit about moving. The trophies can come with you, but the feeling is another matter.

A ground spills well beyond its turnstiles. It’s the pub where someone’s dad always stood, the walk past the same houses, the people you only know by their seat numbers. None of this makes it into an architectural presentation, but it goes some way to explaining why supporters can admit every improvement in a new stadium and still miss the old one.

West Ham are a stubborn case in point. A decade on from leaving the Boleyn Ground, the club is still talking atmosphere and matchday frustrations with supporter representatives. A 2025 supporters’ survey flagged the stadium’s layout and distance from the pitch as major concerns. More capacity doesn’t automatically bring more intimacy, and time alone doesn’t smooth over every compromise.

A decade is, as a rule, quite a lot of time. But writing off every new ground as a cultural downgrade is a bit too easy, and I say that as someone who would happily defend a leaking roof. Tottenham’s 17,500-seat, single-tier South Stand is a serious attempt to give supporters the physical conditions to make noise together.

Architecture does matter. Proximity, rake and the way people are arranged can help a crowd become more than thousands of separate spectators. The difference is between creating those conditions and assuming atmosphere comes in the box. A vast, uninterrupted bank of seats still needs people who can afford to fill it, who can build routines and who feel some ownership of the place.

Everton’s new waterfront stadium takes a different route to continuity. Its brickwork nods to the familiar latticework of Goodison Park while responding to Liverpool’s dockland architecture, giving the building a relationship with both club and city. Again, it can’t reproduce Goodison, but it suggests that moving on doesn’t have to mean starting with an anonymous shell. Bricks, it turns out, can have a sense of occasion.

Then there’s Fulham, who complicate things further. Their Riverside redevelopment shows that big change can happen at home, alongside the historic structures that make Craven Cottage recognisable.

Staying put offers continuity, though it still raises questions about who the new facilities serve and how different experiences share one ground. Keeping an address is only part of keeping a culture. None of this is a defence of poor access, cramped concourses or inadequate facilities.

Supporters deserve grounds that are comfortable and accessible, and I’m aware that “it has character” is what people say about places where the heating doesn’t work. And the great stadiums weren’t born with history attached, somebody had to sit through the first forgettable afternoon before anyone could remember an unforgettable night.

Even Fratton Park had a dull 0-0 once (crazy, right?), so Milan’s unveiling should be the start of a conversation. There’s no reason to declare the Generali Stadium soulless before a ball has been kicked. Although there’s every reason to scrutinise what “carrying the spirit of San Siro” actually means: ticket prices, space for supporter groups, rituals, and whose voices shape the move.

The roof will be ready on opening day. Belonging will take longer. The real test of Milan’s new home is whether supporters get the room, access and freedom to make it theirs, and to make it a little bit shit in their own particular way.