Karaiskakis Stadium, Football stadium in Piraeus, Greece.
Karaiskakis Stadium is a football ground in Piraeus, Greece, built with a modern bowl shape that seats over 33,000 people. The West Stand includes business areas and suites, while the remaining seating wraps around the pitch in a continuous ring that offers views of the grass from every angle.
The site opened in 1896 as the Neo Phaliron Velodrome for the Athens Olympics, where Frenchman Paul Masson won three track cycling golds. Renovated in the 1960s, it hosted the 1971 European Cup Winners' Cup final between Chelsea and Real Madrid, the first European football final in Greece; the first match ended 1-1 and Chelsea won the replay 2-1. It was demolished and rebuilt facing a different direction in 14 months for the 2004 Olympics, and hosted the 2023 UEFA Super Cup.
The ground is named after Georgios Karaiskakis, the independence-war commander mortally wounded in the area. In the tribune where Gate 7 stands, twenty-one seats are black instead of red, forming the number 7 in memory of the 21 Olympiacos supporters who died there on 8 February 1981 after a 6-0 win over AEK Athens; a monument on the eastern side bears their names.
The stadium is served directly by Line 1 of the Athens metro at Neo Faliro station, under five minutes from Piraeus and about fifteen minutes from Omonia in central Athens; by road it is roughly 8 km from downtown Athens. Parking on site is free and holds up to 1,000 cars. The tribunes are designed to empty within seven minutes.
Twenty-one seats in the stand where Gate 7 stood are black instead of red, arranged to form the number 7, and a monument on the eastern side of the stadium lists the names of the twenty-one Olympiacos supporters who died there on 8 February 1981 after a 6-0 win over AEK Athens. The tribunes are designed to empty within seven minutes.
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