3. Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi
If you’ve seen World Cup winners Philip Lahm, Thomas Mueller and Bastian Schweinsteiger on an Indian football pitch, you’ve been to the the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium. The biggest stadium in the capital of the country, the venue proudly welcomes 60,000 spectators.
Host to the Baichung Bhutia’s farewell match (India versus Bayern Munich) in 2012, the JLN Stadium is one of the biggest sporting amphitheatres in the country.
Host to the Delhi Dynamos FC, the JLN Stadium hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and has been home to the National Team on a number of occasions. The design is similar to the Foshan Stadium in China, and allows spectators to vacate the venue in 6 minutes in emergency situations.
The stadium boasts of a new Electro-Voice professional audio system, making the atmosphere crazy and breath-taking at crucial moments.
The ground has been home to a number of superstars in the world of football. In 2014, Delhi Dynamos signed Juventus and Italian striker Alessandro Del Piero as their icon player. In the subsequent season, the club signed former Liverpool star John Arne Riise, former Chelsea star Florent Malouda as players and Brazilian Galactico Roberto Carlos as a coach, making its presence felt in all parts of the world.
Currently, Italian World Cup winner Gianluca Zambrotta is the head coach of the Delhi outfit.
The ground is also home to the Indian National Football Team. It also hosted the 2011 SAFF Tournament, in which the Indian Team emerged victorious. It is, thus, the fortress of Indian football in the truest form of the word.
