Wembley, San Siro, Camp Nou, Maracana – all iconic stadiums in world football, but could we be about to add the Timsah Arena to that list? The answer, is probably ‘yes’, given that the ground is the new home to Turkish side Bursaspor is in the shape of a giant crocodile.
Key facts
Club: Bursaspor
Opening: 2015
Capacity: 43,331 seats
History and description
Reflective of the club’s nickname the ‘green crocodiles’, the new 45,000-seater ground features the open mouth of a reptile, with teeth and eyes that light up on matchdays.
Take a look at the video above for how the ground looks and how the construction process happens.
The design for the new Bursaspor stadium, which is called the “Timsah Arena”, tightropes a fine line of being the crazy design from the brain child of an imaginative school student to being the most bad ass stadium ever built. There could be an argument that perhaps the spotlights shooting out of the crocodile’s eyes are a tad too far.
If you ever wanted to build a massive bright green stadium then the city you would want to choose would have to be Bursa, fortunately enough for all involved. Plonk the soon-to-be Timsah Arena in the centre of Rome or Paris and it will stand out like some sort of great giant crocodile. Where as if you were to drop the Timsah Arena in Bursa, it would nestle in quite nicely.
Bursa is a city of green; indeed, the city is sometimes referred to as “Yeşil Bursa”, or “Green Bursa” due to the large amount of green seen around the city. From the large amount of parks through the city to the Yeşil Mosque and of course, to the incredibly impressive forest-covered Mt. Uludağ just south of the city, it ensures that giant crocodile or no giant crocodile, Bursa is a city shadowed by green.
The original designs for the new Timsah Arena (Timsah meaning “crocodile” in Turkish) were to be without the crocodile’s head and instead focused on making the surrounding sides of the stadium look like a crocodiles scales. Bursaspor changed their mind though, perhaps in fear of constantly having confused PETA members throwing blood on the outside of the stadium, although probably not.
The cost of the stadium is being shared with the City, Bursa are going to pay only at the moment around £42,000,000. Although as England fans will have noted with the new Wembley Stadium, these prices can soon increase. If the stadium’s valuation stays around about that same value it would cost around about half of what it would cost to buy Cristiano Ronaldo.
The stadium will also become part of the Turkish Football Federation’s bid to host the 2020 UEFA European Championships after having failed to host the competition in 2008, 2012, and 2016. The fight for the 2016 Championships was the closest Turkey has come, losing out narrowly to eventual winners, France.
