The Barça players were clearly impressed with the Dallas Cowboys Stadium when they trained there on Friday evening ahead of their last game of the US Tour on Saturday night.
“Everything is bigger in Texas” …or so they say! It certainly
seemed to be true of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium where the squad were able to experience firsthand
the fantastic venue for Saturday’s game.
You could see on the faces of the players and the staff that they were well impressed with
the Stadium as they trooped out onto the pitch to train on Friday. The main point of interest was
the retractable roof and the huge video screens hanging from it -50 metres wide and 21 metres high
with brilliant high definition images across their 1050 square metre surface. A high tech highlight
which cost a stunning 40 million dollars to install.
1.200 million dollars
The Stadium is also air conditioned – creating a perfect temperature inside to
contrast with the hot and humid weather outside these last few days –and the 1,200 million
dollar venue is filled with VIP lounges and private boxes, which together can house more than
10,000 high rollers.
The Stadium as a whole can seat nearly 110,000 fans, as it did for the 2010 NBA All Stars
game, when 108.713 attended, slightly more than the 103.219 for the last Super Bowl and its 63,000
fixed seats make it a flexible stadium, with the possibility of expanding through the private boxes
to 82,000 and further increasing capacity with supplementary seating to more than 100,000. For
Barça’s game the capacity has been fixed at 63,000.
“What an incredible Stadium!”
“What an incredible Stadium” was Carles Puyol’s response on
Twitter after training, whilst Gerard Piqué agreed and added a photo to his Twitter page. At the
end of the training session, Piqué and Victor Valdes both tried to kick the ball up at the massive
video screens, something that the keeper finally managed to a round of applause from the 400
invited fans in the ground.