2018 England

The Walkers Stadium is the arena where Leicester City play their home games. It was built and opened in 2002, and was named after snack food manufacturers Walkers, after a seven digit sponsorship deal was struck with Leicester City. The deal involved naming rights for ten years, meaning that the deal will expire in 2012. Every seat has an unobstructed view of the pitch, and this makes it a fine stadium to stage the 2018 World Cup. The only drawback is the number of seats which adds up to 32500.

World Cup Games in Leicester?

The cost of this stadium was one of the factors that led to Leicester City going into receivership. Leicester were also relegated to the Championship. This financial crisis meant that Leicester had to pass the stadium ownership to an American company called Teachers Insurance, who had supplied £28 million in a bond scheme towards the construction of the stadium. Milan Mandaric took over the financially stricken club in October 2006 in a £25 million deal. A reported £15 million of these went to buy back the stadium from Teachers Insurance. Mandaric said that he dreams of Leicester becoming a dominant club in English football in the near future, and also increasing the stadium capacity to 45000 seats. This would mean that if these plans were to be successful, the Walkers Stadium (or whatever it would be called after the expiry of the naming rights deal) would be one of the first choices to stage games in World Cup 2018.

The England national team played a friendly in the Walkers Stadium back in June 2003 against Serbia & Montenegro, a game which England won 2-1. In October 2003, the stadium staged a friendly between Brazil and Jamaica, which Brazil won 1-0. More recently, the arena was used for an U21s game between England and Serbia & Montenegro. England won this game 1-0 with the sole goal coming from Matt Derbyshire.