Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The photo here was taken on Sunday. It shows the inside of a football stadium-to-be. But it's not just any old football stadium though. This one is costing in excess of €300 million to complete. That's a lot of football stadium , I can hear you say. Although it's just a construction site today, on 9 June 2006 it will be the stadium where the opening game of the 2006 FIFA World Cup featuring the hosts, Germany, will kick off. More than a billion pairs of eyes are expected to focus on it then.

The complex that houses the field of dreams is called the Allianz Arena and it's located on the outskirts of Munich. Those backing the venture say that it's going to become a benchmark in modern architecture. Despite the hammering and sawing, the dirt and the dust on Sunday, one could see that this is not a hollow claim because the structure is indeed audacious. At night it will glow red and white, the colours of Bayern Munich, who will use it as their home ground from next year on.

The best thing about the Allianz Arena is that the football fan will be seated right on the edge of the pitch, thus uniting the audience and the players in an almost intimate closeness. The model here is the theatre, more correctly the theatre of Shakespeare's time. And no wonder, because the arena's architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, regard the great English soccer stadiums — Old Trafford, Anfield — as primarily theatrical spaces without compare anywhere in the world. Their goal is to reproduce this English atmosphere in Munich, just as they have done in Basel, where they designed the local team's grounds. Incidentally, it will be the main Swiss stadium for the next European football championship in 2008, which Switzerland is hosting with Austria. In the very same year, the Beijing Olympics will take place, in a stadium designed by Herzog and de Meuron.

As we left the grassless Allianz Arena we fantasized about the roar of the 66,000 fans who'd someday hail the goals we'd never score there. On the way home, we laughed ourselves warm by expanding our vocabulary. The favourite addition was the new German word for "sheep", Pulloverschwein, (sweater + pig). Our driver claimed to have misheard, however, and insisted that a Pulloverschwein is a member of Germany's Green party. It was that kind of day. Thanks to all those involved for making it so memorable.