Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: West Ham United
John McDougall
A huge abandoned stadium has been left to become overgrown for years despite having a capacity of around 250,000 people has a different use nowadays and even saw a Premier League team train there a few years ago.
The Great Strahov Stadium is located in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and opened almost a century ago back in 1926.
The location has a storied history and boasts a field that is an extraordinary three times longer and wider than a standard football pitch.
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The stadium has a seating capacity of 56,000 people, but an overall capacity of a quarter of a million spectators.
The location was used to host synchronised gymnastics between the First World War and the Second World War, and then was used again after 1945 for mass gymnastics demonstrations during the era of communism in Czechoslovakia.
It was also used for motorcycle speedway events after the Second World War, but has had several different uses in the past four decades or so.
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Since 1990, the stadium has hosted a range of rock concerts including The Rolling Stones, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, U2 and AC/DC.
It was also used as a venue for a massive public mass in 1995, which was delivered by Pope John Paul II.
Sparta Prague also use the stadium as its training ground, with the vast field being split into six standard football pitches and two futsal grounds.
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But Sparta Prague are not the only team to have used the facilities of the Great Strahov Stadium to train, as a Premier League side utilised it a few years ago.
West Ham United used the facility in 2023 to prepare for the Europa Conference League final which was being hosted in the Czech capital.
The Hammers beat Italian side Fiorentina 2-1 to win the London side's first major silverware since 1981, with the match also Declan Rice's last for West Ham before moving to Arsenal for a total transfer fee of £105m.
The potential capacity of 250,000 people also means it dwarfs the number of fans that Sparta Prague's home ground of the epet ARENA can hold, which stands at just over 18,000 supporters.
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There had been discussions at the start of this century about potentially demolishing the decaying stadium, but these suggestions have cooled and not materialised, so it appears the Great Strahov Stadium will not be disappearing any time soon, despite its overgrown and rusting looks.