“Football Was Never Part of the Plans”

Peter Landolt, stadium manager of Letzigrund, in an interview with stadiaworld about the roles of athletics and football in the stadium, the significance of the “Diamond League”, and possible competition from the Hardturm project.

Peter Landolt
Peter Landolt Image: Stadt Zürich
stadiaworld: The Letzigrund site is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and it has already been almost 18 years since the new stadium was built. Please give us a brief review of its development and history.
Landolt: The original Letzigrund was built by FC Zürich, whose officials found a piece of land just outside the city limits. Back then, it was really far outside the city; it was all meadows around it, there was nothing there. Not even the districts or the municipality belonged to Zürich at the time. Later, the main stand burned down, and FCZ no longer had the money to rebuild it. From that point on, in the late 1930s, the city took over the project.

This led, in several phases, to the old Letzigrund – the predecessor of the current stadium, so to speak. At the end of the 1990s, the decision was made to build a new, modern athletics stadium. Football was never planned here.