St Mary's Stadium

About

St Mary's Stadium is a seated but also safe-standing football stadium in Southampton, Hampshire, England, which has been the home stadium of EFL Championship club Southampton since 2001. The stadium has a capacity of 32,384 and is currently the largest football stadium in South East England. The Taylor Report on 29 January 1990 required all First and Second Division clubs to have all-seater stadiums by August 1994, Southampton's directors initially decided to upgrade The Dell into an all-seater stadium (which was completed in 1993) but speculation about relocation continued, especially as an all-seater Dell had a capacity of just over 15,000; despite this, Southampton continued to defy the odds and survive in the new FA Premier League after 1992.

After a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to build a new 25,000-seater stadium and leisure complex at Stoneham, on the outskirts of Southampton, the city council offered the club the chance to build a new ground on the disused gas work site in the heart of the city, about one and half miles from The Dell. The move was cited as the club returning home, because the club was formed by members of the nearby St. Mary's Church, as the football...