Hampden Park

Hampden is known to every football fan in Scotland as the home of Scottish football — it’s also the home of Queen of the South football club and they regularly play in a 45,000 seater stadium with about 600 people there.
Hampden is also a conferencing venue and in has some great facilities with really friendly staff and a fantastic food offering for the breaks that are inevitably required for all day meetings.

There are four ways to visit the stadium.
1. Go watch a Scotland match
2. Go watch a domestic cup final or semi final
3. Visit the museum of Scotland and get a stadium tour
4. Go watch Queens Park, known locally a Queens or the Spiders.
Number 4 is the most quintessentially Glaswegian way to do it. Queens Park bounce around the lowest tiers of the Scottish football league. They are said to be the only amateur team playing in a professional league.
Wear black and white.

Hamster Park is basically one big treadmill. It’s infested with Guinea Pigs and Gerbils and so Richard Gere is often here, scouting for new love interests.
First-​Hand Experience: More info about my personal experience at this stadium — I’ve still never seen a match at Hampden. It’s one of my goals in life, to watch Scotland play here. However I’ve been in here for a concert, and just to look around, and been shown the place by friends. I’ve even slept right in front of it (although I don’t recommend ever sleeping in your car in Glasgow. Do as I say, not as I do). I really want to come here for a footy game because that is what this place was meant for. However having been here in person and seen it outside and inside (in 2011 and 2014), I have to say it’s an absolutely stunning place. It reminds me a bit of Wembley, before they knocked it down.
So when I was doing my first tour of Scotland in 2011, I also hit up every single stadium in the country. My obsession with footy (soccer to Americans) is the reason. Every stadium review — like all my reviews — are based on first-​hand personal experience, usually from multiple visits. As recently as Fall 2014, when I was «stuck» in UK for 3 months, I went to most of them yet again while travelling. I have pictures of me at many of them, which I will post later. Also, when back in Scotland I plan to take more pix, and add more stadia! So watch this space!
*** return to regular review ***
It’s the home stadium of Queen’s Park FC (an Edinburgh based team that can’t get anywhere near filling it), and has been since 1903. More importantly (unless you’re a Queen’s Park fan), it is the home of Scotland, the national football team. They play here, and generate the Hampden Roar when «who ate all the pies» Charlie Adam tries to score from 65 yards, often succeeding.
It’s record attendance was in 1937 when a whopping 149,500 people came to see England play Scotland here. Crazy. It now holds 51k people. The 149k attendance is a European record for a match — only Rio’s Maracana held more people.
The cup finals are played here, most of the time. It’s a legendary stadium in Scotland, and while it’s not as intense as Ibrox or especially Celtic Park, it’s still an amazing venue.
It has been used for a Rugby World Cup match as well as Athletics and such.
Genesis and Paul Young were the first musicians to play here, while Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Bön Jovi, Eagles, U2, Oasis, George Michael, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Diamond, Take That, AC/​DC, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Pink and Paul McCartney have all played here since. Wow.

Despite living 200 yards away for almost three years, I had never been inside Hampden until Springsteen and the ESB brought the house down this week. Amazing show, and Hampden wasn’t a terrible venue for it despite being… well, uh, a stadium.
Admittedly, coming from a part of the US with two fantastic stadiums (Lambeau Field and Miller Park), I have high expectations about what this kind of venue should be. And frankly, Hampden could be a lot worse (see: the old County Stadium back home in Milwaukee, back in the late 90s…). It’s just bland and a bit shabby. I had a hard time believing that this was an Olympic venue, and the national stadium for the entire country of Scotland. I mean, yeah, we’re in a recession, and yeah, they’re doing (controversial) updates, but geez. I was a little embarrassed, not that the entertainment seemed to mind at all.
I won’t be singing Wrecking Ball about Hampden anytime soon, but nor do I have the kind of love for it that Bruce has for the now-​departed Meadowlands in that track. I would wonder if anyone here really does.
(Two wee points to add for anyone attending a Hampden event:
— please throw your litter in bins not on my street, and
— please don’t sing or holler in queue for the train as it inspires many locals to near-​homicide.)

When Scotland are playing. always 5 stars. pity about this year (again!!)

Scotland Fottballs national stadium. Used to be a modern state of the art stadium but if you look around the world now it looks pretty dated.
Viewing in the cheap seats are pretty poor and transport to the staduim can be difficult unless you choose to walk it.
Has a museum, plays host to big concerts (Pink, Take That etc.) Scottish rugby union games also get played here ocassionally. As well as cup finals and boardroom events and meetings/​dinners.
Thats all folks.
Alba gu brath

An absolute disgrace of a stadium… if you are unlucky enough to be seated behind the goals you are going to struggle to see anything

Ah, Hampden, the theatre of dreams. A stadium with a great history, once accommodating more football fans than any other in the history of European football. Not much else to do in those days probably.
I love a Scotland home international football match. I’m a keen fan of the game at all times, but no one needs to be reminded that club associations in Glasgow generate divisions that are much more profound than any sense of unity enjoyed by either side. Scotland games are different — the whole country united with a common purpose. The walk from my house in Pollokshields to Hampden at times feels like more of a march, thin ranks gradually swelling as you grow closer and closer to the field of battle. I actually count myself lucky to be so close that I can walk there — a single stadium catering for fans from as far as Gretna in the south and Shetland in the north.
A football stadium’s qualities are more than just architectural. It’s the coming together of fans and the collective enthusiasm they generate that really characterises any great sporting venue. The famous Hampden atmosphere, often described as the ‘Hampden Roar’ is what makes it a great place to be. In truth, one might reasonably say that this is generated in spite of the building, rather than because of it. There has been much written about the lack of natural atmosphere within the stadium, with its shallow sloped stands and pitch-​side running track meaning fans are quite some distance from the players of either team. But nevertheless, the Scots’ tireless enthusiasm for the game musters a tremendous noise and an almost tangible sense of excitement time after time. That’s despite the predictable ineptitude on show with just as frequent regularity.
In practical terms, the stadium is modern and functionally pretty standard. Toilets are adequate, although not so clean you’d eat your dinner off them, that’s for sure! On the subject of dinner, you could do worse than try the Hampden pie, a ‘steak’ based variant of the normal mince Scotch pie, which warms you up when the action on the pitch fails to spark.

It is Scotland’s National Stadium and a 5 Star rated on by UEFA at that, and all us football fans want to do is love this place. But unfortunately, no matter how many times you visit the Hampden Experience, or go to watch a semi-​cup final or the national time, we can’t help but walk away feeling heavily short changed.
I saw Scotland Vs France in France’s «we’ve won the world cup» tour, and even at such a young age I felt seriously dejected. For a start, the completely unnessesary running track around the pitch ensures that if you’re sitting in the first few rows you would definitely get a better view of the game on your telly. And because the place is so big, it rarely fills leaving not only the atmosphere pretty substandard, but it makes us looks like we can’t rally enough supporters for cup finals!
Oh Hampden, how I want to love thee, and it is your history that softens the blow. However I would be in favour of the SFA Shifting things to Murryfield, if not nothing but the atmosphere.

I’m not a huge football fan but many moons ago I came to Hampden to see Scotland play Australia, the highlight of the game was when a streaker ran on the pitch. It was the most action that pitch had seen the whole 90 minutes.
Aside from football games Hampden is also a great gig venue, I went to see Bön Jovi strutting their stuff here and it was a great gig with a fantastic atmosphere. There was even a woman who ran on stage and the band didn’t even bother, I’m sure they would have had a word with their security staff afterwards though.
My Grandpa lives really near Hampden and when there is a concert playing you can usually hear it from his back garden. In summer I used to go down and we would sit outside to hear who was playing. We heard Robbie Williams, Rod Stewart, U2 and many others from the comfort of his garden deck chairs.

Depending on why you are here (Queen’s Park FC or Scotland) you can have two very different experiences.
The international nights can be electric, with the Scottish fans really get behind the team and this is what lead to the phrase «Hampden Roar» being coined. Hampden was recently redeveloped and the facilities are excellent.
For Queen’s Park home matches, the atmosphere can be terrible, with the ground only 1% full with the average attendance QPFC get. The fact that the seats are set so far back form the pitch can only magnify this. Parking is free on QP match days, and has a huge capacity.
Also used for cup finals and concerts.

The fact that Hampden is a five star graded stadium by UEFA means nothing to the ordinary fan, I’m afraid.
It may well have lovely changing rooms, a swish tunnel and good access for team buses, but when it comes down to it, the much-​maligned trackside area just cannot be ignored. A seat down the front of any of the stands results in the worst view in Scottish football while the upper tier of the most recent addition, the BT Stand, shakes in a highly disconcerting manner on the rare occasions Scotland muster a goal here.
I should love this stadium. I was there when Zinedine Zidane scored one of the greatest goals ever. I was there when Scotland beat France, Holland (doesn’t matter that we ended up losing 6 – 1) and Argentina. And I was there when Partick Thistle beat Queen’s Park twice in the 2000 – 2001 season.
The fact that I don’t says it all.

Hampden is universally declared as «rubbish» by everyone who has visited. Apparently the running track between the crowd and the pitch dilutes the atmosphere somewhat.
However, I am just a simple girl who doesn’t go to the football every week so I kind of like it. I’ve had both good and bad experiences at Hampden; good being the international games and bad being a turgid cup final between Celtic and Dunfermline.
I also worked in hospitality at the Champions League Final when it was held here in 2002. The sight of the Real Madrid fans going crazy as the team bus passed by with the players waving out of the windows is a sight I won’t forget in a hurry.

While many will shudder at the thought of some of the Scotland national team’s performances here in recent years, Hampden is still a fortress steeped in history. Not only has it been home to the national football side for over a hundred years but it has also hosted some famous cup finals over the years.
Queens Park FC use Hampden as their home stadium, as they have done since 1903, and play in the Scottish 3^rd Division with crowds of less than a thousand per game. This gives the place a very strange feel, with them playing in front of an almost empty stadium. This is in stark contrast to the Scottish Cup and League Cup Finals played here each season in front of a full house. The semi-​finals of both cups are also played here, but in front of smaller crowds.
The biggest problem with Hampden is that the stands are so terribly far away from the pitch due to the large trackside at the goal ends. I wonder if there is another football stadium in the world which has it this bad — I’ve certainly never seen one. Inevitably this deadens the atmosphere a little; you would imagine the place being so much louder if the crowd was right ‘in your face’ the way it is at Celtic Park or Ibrox. One would have thought this would have been an issue the SFA would have dealt with when the stadium was refurbished a few years back.
Due to the refurbishment, Hampden is a very modern stadium and although its 52 thousand capacity is just about adequate for most Scotland fixtures, it is not quite so for cup finals involving the Old Firm, where many fans still miss out on tickets. The drink and food prices are on the expensive side but I’ve yet to see a major football stadium in the UK where they aren’t.
Hampden can still be a fortress for Scotland during crucial qualifying matches when the Tartan Army is at full voice. If only there wasn’t such a huge distance between the fans and the pitch it would be even more intimidating for the opposition. Not only that — when the players are so far away it’s even more difficult to see what’s going on on the park.

I am going to stand up for Hampden Park. As a southsider, I rather like the way that most of the streets from Shawlands to Govanhill are filled with supporters strolling down to the big game on cup final day: if they had proper car-​parking near the venue, this wouldn’t happen. It means that everyone gets a flavour of the big match’s atmosphere.
Then, when they have gigs, you get to hear U2 for free, without having to actually watch them, pay for the overpriced burgers or hear Bono’s between song lectures.
Next: it is neutral. Let’s just imagine what would happen if the national team decided to play at, say, Ibrox.
Finally, it isn’t just football. They had American football here for a few seasons, until they noticed that nobody actually paid for a ticket– they were handed out for free by the council, most businesses, random guys on the street. Well, it was fun, it just didn’t have any roots in the community.

The current Hampden park was finished around the year 2000, and it’s proudest moments so far have been hosting the 2002 Champions League Final and the 2007 UEFA cup final. Despite this, it’s a pretty underwhelming arena and from the outside especially it looks far less impressive than the other 2 stadiums in the city. Inside it fares somewhat better, and can develop a pretty intense atmosphere during big matches, but as I have no time for the village idiots who frequent the stands when Scotland play here, it’s not to my liking.
On the other hand, it’s also a very well used gig venue, with AC/​DC and Bruce Springsteen bringing over 50,000 punters in each earlier this year. It’s a great gig venue if you have a standing ticket, but if you’re seated, bring some binoculars or you won’t actually see anything.
A minor correction to the previous review. QPR are actually a professional team from London, it’s the far more hopeless Queens Park who play at Hampden, to a tiny band of dedicated but tragic supporters.

Why the SFA choose to play at Hampden Park is really beyond me, yes its a neutral ground to some extent but it’s also the home ground of amateur football team QPR. It’s not a serious football stadium and the track around the pitch leaves many feeling too far away when Scotland play here. I think in this day in age it is almost inexcusable and sums up how feeble the SFA are. Some would hugely disagree with my point pointing out the great atmosphere that can be had when the ground is full and Scotland are playing a big team. ’ not convinced.

Hampden Park is the home of Scottish football located to the south of the city. It used to hold the largest football crowds in the world, however not today as it only holds around 55,000 people. The redeveloped Hampden often struggles to create much of an atmosphere, however on occasion it can be the best place in the world!

Located just outside the city centre it is the home of Scotland’s Football team. When there is a match on you can feel the electricity and you can not help but be proud to be Scottish. The roads around the stadium do get really really busy but the traffic is directed even still it is best to go early.
The stadium is also home to many a gig and you can hear the music if you are in the area.
The stadium also has a museum that you can visit it costs £6 per adult £3 per child and you also get family tickets. The other option is the museum and stadium tour costing £9 an adult and £4.50 for a child although children under 5 are free. There is also a family ticket available.
They also hold partys and I have heard great reviews from them running down the tunnel to shooting goals etc.

A large stadium mainly used for Scotland games. It is also used as a concert venue for gigs. At Scotland games the atmosphere is amazing, it is electric!
You need to arrive in plenty of time as the traffic can be crazy and there will be plenty of people running into the roads. Overall a great place to go!