Having signed the golden kid, Endrick “The Finisher” Felipe to their ranks, Real Madrid are finalising the gold standard of football stadiums smack in the centre of Madrid. The extraordinary lengths to which they are going in order to provide the perfect pitch for their games were shown on the website earlier this month.
A team that plays football impressively well is also impressive in its engineering of a massive underground greenhouse that will move the grass to the playing field using giant elevators to put in place six planks of the best-cared, most attended, and well-guarded grass on the planet to make the playing field for one of Europe’s greatest clubs.
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It is perhaps the world's most extraordinary stadium in terms of the machinery in place to protect the pitch.
Like a supermodern version of the grand underground innerworks and banks of elevators in Rome’s Collesium, some 26m under Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium, the grass will be warehoused in six 120-20m pieces of the playing field that will get constant managed light, perfect mowing and watering.
The area, called the Hypogeum, is where lengthwise cuts of the field will be stored in six levels, each managed from a control centre with its own bank of lawnmowing robots, LED lighting, each level with own ventilation and climate control, camera-driven irrigation and fertilising systems with UV treatments to provide perfect maintenance to keep the grass at optimum levels all the time.
Hydraulic elevators will put the pitch in place for game days, and will lower it to its underground grass paradise when not in use or other events are taking place in the stadium.
Since beginning of its construction in 1943, the stadium has been a major project in its architecture and mission, At its initial opening in 1947, it came to symbolise the ambitions and dreams of the Spanish capital.
Continued improvements have made it an icon of the sport and of the city. The new phase of modernisation that began in the 2000s led to it being one of UEFA's category of Elite Stadiums in 2007, the highest distinction of the European Football Association.
The legendary stadium will have to wait until July 2024 for Brazil’s Endrick Felipe to bring his legendary play and story to the club and the city.