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Madrid, May 25 (EFE)

Rayo Vallecano’s first ever European final will be held at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, built on the same site as the old ‘Zentralstadion’, in the heart of the eastern German city, with a capacity for 45,228 fans for international matches and a state-of-the-art roof designed to achieve “superior acoustics”.

Construction of the modern stadium, which incorporates the wall of the historic former ground, began in 2000. Its foundation stone was laid to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the German Football Association in this city, and construction was completed in 2004. It was inaugurated on July 16 of that year, in preparation for the 2005 Confederations Cup and the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

Hosting up to four matches during the 2024 European Championship—three group stage matches and one Round of 16 match—the stadium features a hybrid surface, a playing field measuring 105 x 69 meters, and a total length of 230 meters from north to south and 210 meters from east to west, according to official stadium figures. The stadium’s height to the roof is 46.5 meters.

Of its 45,228 spectator capacity for European competitions (47,800 for domestic tournaments from 2024-25), 11,200 are standing room.

It has been the home of RB Leipzig since 2010, in a city of 630,000 inhabitants that now hosts the Conference League final, on the same site as the Central Stadium, also known as the Hundred Thousand Stadium, built in 1954, due to the stadium’s capacity at the time.

For example, 110,000 spectators attended the match between East Germany and Czechoslovakia on October 27, 1957, and 100,000 attended the German first division match between SC Rotation Leipzig and Lokomotive Leipzig on September 9, 1956.

In 1994, the Central Stadium had to be closed “due to its poor state of construction,” until 2000, when construction began on the new Leipzig Arena, which is also part of Rayo Vallecano’s history, regardless of the score in Wednesday’s final. EFE