Former West Ham United chairmanEggert Magnusson has described the club's new Olympic Stadium as a 'disaster' and has suggested that it be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
According tothe Sunthe 66-year-old was one of the main thinkers behind the club's ambition to move into the stadium way back in 2006, and was instrumental in convincing the London Olympic 2012 chief Lord SebastienCoe to hand over the ground to the East London club after it had been finished.
Since officially moving in at the start of this season stadium costs have exceeded£750m, andthe ground has been hampered with violence and policing issues, as well as complaints about the distance the stands are from the actual pitch, leading Magnusson to claiming that had he been in charge, these sorts of issues would have been avoided.
You cannot build an Olympic stadium and then make it a football stadium," said the former Hammers owner.
Former West Ham chairman Eggert Magnusson hits out at London Stadium - 'it is unfit for football' https://t.co/3dxUkeWUkH pic.twitter.com/ISsztIwKqQ
You begin with football in mind. We had plans and costings for a stadium with retractable seats, like the Stade de France.
Upton Park had a special atmosphere and you want fans to hear tackles and what the managers are saying. What we have now is a mess.
The stadium is simply unfit for football. It's a coliseum for athletics - you have people 40 metres from the pitch, moving to concourses so they can see.The seats are very slow and expensive to move as they were an after-thought. I really feel sorry for the fans.
I don't think anything can be done now. It's better for it to be torn down and started from scratch.�