“We lose a lot of balls.”
Yodelayheehoo and welcome to Switzerland! This is the Ottmar Hitzfeld stadium located in the village of Gspon and it is Europe’s highest football stadium. Carved into a mountainside in the Swiss Alps it is home to FC Gspon, a small village team who play their football at 6,500ft above sea level. The pitch is artificial because it is difficult to grow decent grass at this altitude, and the fans arrive by cable car so the match day experience is somewhat unique.
It isn’t quite the highest football stadium in the world though. That honour goes to the Estadio Hernando Siles in La Paz, Bolivia. That stadium is just shy of 12,000ft above sea level and is so high that up until recently FIFA actually banned any World Cup qualifying matches from being played there because of the unfair advantage it gave the Bolivian players.