Toumba Stadium
Encyclopedia
Toumba Stadium is a football stadium
Soccer-specific stadium
Soccer-specific stadium is a term used mainly in the United States, Canada, Australia and South Korea coined by Lamar Hunt, to refer to a sports stadium either purpose built or fundamentally redesigned for soccer and whose primary function is to host soccer matches, as opposed to a multipurpose...

 in Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...

, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, owned by the multisports club A.S. PAOK. It was built in 6 September 1959 as the club's prime sporting venue and served the home ground for the club's football team, which was participating in the then national football league. The stadium is located in the district of Toumba in eastern Thessaloniki. Its original capacity was about 45,000, until the installation of seating on all stands in 1998 reduced the capacity to 32,000 (seated).

The introduction of security zones in 2000 further reduced the capacity to the current 28,703 seats. A record attendance of 45,252 has been recorded in a 1st division football match between PAOK and AEK on December 19, 1976. The stadiums official name is simply "PAOK Stadium", however it is commonly referred to as "Toumba Stadium" after the name of the district (Toumba district) in which it is located in.

Toumba Stadium has hosted several games of the Greece national football team
Greece national football team
The Greece national football team represents Greece in association football and is controlled by the Hellenic Football Federation, the governing body for football in Greece. Greece's home ground is Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus and their head coach is Fernando Santos...

. The stadium was selected as one of the training venues for the football tournaments of the 2004 Olympic Games and due to this it was heavily upgraded. The relevant works commenced in 2003 and the stadium was again ready to be used in the summer of 2004, boasting a brand new look. The most important modification was the construction of a new four-storey building behind the main west stand (gates 1,2 and 3).

The new building of the stadium houses a number of VIP
VIP
VIP and V.I.P. is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:-In general:* Vacuum insulated panel* Values, Influence, and Peers, an anti-crime campaign in Ontario elementary schools* Variable Information Printing, a form of on-demand printing...

 boxes and VIP
VIP
VIP and V.I.P. is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:-In general:* Vacuum insulated panel* Values, Influence, and Peers, an anti-crime campaign in Ontario elementary schools* Variable Information Printing, a form of on-demand printing...

lounges, service areas for TV and the Press and new club offices. A new roof was also installed over the west stand, while other works included new seats, upgrading of the dressing rooms, a new pitch and re-enforcement of the concrete pillars below the north curved stand (gates 4 and 4a).

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