Catalan giants have announced further delays to the upgrade of their home ground, projecting new completion window for five years as they assure readiness in 2025.
The club have used Camp Nou as home since it was built in 1957 and its 63 years existence had seen the largest stadium in Spain and Europe host big sport events including two Uefa Champions League final (1989 and 1999) and five matches in the 1982 FIFA World Cup but it has only been renovated on three occasion 1995, 2008 and 2018 with the fourth currently postponed.
Barcelona had hoped to remodel the Camp Nou and bring the capacity up to 105,000 with a cost of around £495 million (€600 million), a project expected to run from 2017 to early 2021 before financial crisis amid coronavirus pandemic fashioned a setback to the goal.
The club’s financial director Jordi Moix said that the Blaugranas where earlier faced with political changes in the city and the instability created by the region’s push for independence as instigated by 2019 Catalan Referendum before it was worsen by COVID-19.
Moix said that: “If we approve the financing for this season and start building work next summer at full speed we are talking about four years of works and we are talking about inaugurating the stadium in 2025,” Moix told newspaper La Vanguardia on Thursday.
“If everything goes to plan I see it happening by that date. It’s been heavily delayed, of course. I wish we could have started two or three years ago.
“There are two elements we couldn’t control, a change in the local government and then trying to agree everything in a politically exceptional time. And then you add the coronavirus to all that, which has delayed almost everything.”
“It is more necessary than ever. We have to revitalize the stadium whatever it takes. Our rivals in Europe are doing it or have already done it.
“We have to do it because the potential for income is much higher with a reformed stadium, with greater income from boxes or the naming rights. It’s an essential project.”
