Stadium

The Mercedes-Benz Arena is a stadium located in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany and home to German Bundesliga club VfB Stuttgart.

Before 1993 it was called Neckarstadion, named after the nearby river Neckar and between 1993 and July 2008 it was called Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion. From the 2008–09 season, the stadium was renamed the Mercedes-Benz Arena, starting with a pre-season friendly against Arsenal on 30 July 2008.

The stadium capacity is currently around 41,000, after one stand (Untertürkheimer Kurve) has been demolished during summer 2009 in the process of converting it to a pure football arena. The rebuilt arena will be finished in December 2011 with a new capacity of 60,000, including terracing. Due to UEFA regulations, which only allows seating, the capacity is reduced to 54,906 during international football matches

The Mercedes-Benz Arena hosted four matches of the 1974 FIFA World Cup, two matches of the 1988 UEFA European Football Championship (a 1st Round match and a semi-final) and six games of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, including a Round of 16 game and the third-place playoff match (see below for details).

The stadium also hosted the finals of the European Cup (now known as UEFA Champions League) in 1959 (Real Madrid vs. Stade de Reims) and 1988 (PSV Eindhoven vs. S.L. Benfica).
Starting in 2009, the Mercedes-Benz Arena will be redeveloped into a football-only stadium. It is planned that new stands will be constructed by the summer of 2011, with pitch level being lowered by 1.30 metres in time for the beginning of the 2009–2010 season. Once all the interior redevelopment is finished, the roof will be expanded to cover new rows of seats. The entire construction is expected to be finished by the end of 2011. The redevelopment was announced along with the stadium's name change in late March 2008. The first computer images of the new arena were released at the same time, also showing a large cube with four video scoreboards above the centre circle, similar to the one in the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt.

Within the first couple of weeks of the redevelopment, 18 undetonated bombs left over from the air raids on Stuttgart during the Second World War were found on the construction site.