10 stadiums named after footballers | OneFootball

Highlights

It is impossible to separate some footballers from a certain club. For example, Steven Gerrard and Liverpool go hand-in-hand, as do Lionel Messi and Barcelona and John Terry and Chelsea.

Some of the greatest footballers to ever play the game have left an everlasting impression on a team during their playing career that survives long after their retirement. They will have forever won the adoration of the fan-base, who will follow them every step of the way for the rest of their lives and then despair when they die.

This has led to football clubs commemorating players with certain gestures after they have left the club. Some gestures include retiring the number those players wore on the back of their shirts during their time with the club, or else naming a stand of the ground in their honour.

Some clubs go even further than that and rename the entire stadium after their player. Here at GIVEMESPORT, we're looking at ten players who lend their name to football stadiums.

1 Didier Drogba

Stade Didier Drogba, Levallois - renamed in 2010

Didier Drogba is highly regard for his time at Chelsea, with whom he spent a total of nine seasons, making 381 appearances and scoring 164 goals and helping them win 12 major honours, including being the hero in their 2012 Champions League success. Long before he arrived in England, the Ivorian had left a big impression on a semi-professional club in France.

Drogba flitted between his native Ivory Coast and France in his youth and finally settled in the latter at the age of 15, at which point he signed with Levallois, a club on the outskirts of Paris. He spent four years with the team and his prolific goalscoring was noticed by Ligue 2 side Le Mans, who signed him in 1997 and handed him his professional debut. In recognition of what he went on to achieve in his career, Levallois renamed their 1,500-seater stadium after Drogba in 2010.

2 Fernando Torres

Estadio Fernando Torres, CF Fuenlabrada - built in 2011

Fernando Torres is one of the biggest names in Spanish football due to his starring role as part of their national team which collected three major honours between 2008 and 2012. He is adored by his boyhood club Atletico Madrid, with whom he made his professional debut and made over 300 appearances, but the football club whose stadium is named after him was a club the forward didn't represent at any point in his playing career.

Torres was born in a city on the outskirts of Spain called Fuenlabrada, and the city's local team CF Fuenlabrada built a new stadium in 2011, which they named it after the striker and his parents were invited as guests of honour for the ground's opening match, a friendly against Atletico Madrid. As of 2024, the club play in the third tier of Spain at the 5,400-seater stadium.

3 Raymond Kopa

Stade Raymond Kopa, Angers SCO - renamed in 2017

Raymond Kopa was a legendary French footballer who won three European Cups in a row as part of the all-conquering Real Madrid side in the late 1950s, and also won the Ballon D'Or in 1958. That three-year spell in Spain was sandwiched by a combined 13 years with Reims, but it was another French club with whom he started his career, that renamed their stadium in his honour.

The winger began his career with Ligue 2 side Angers, who gave him his professional debut at the age of 17. Kopa would make 60 appearances for the club before joining Reims in 1951, and after his death in 2017, the club renamed their 18,000-capacity stadium after him.

4 Mario Kempes

Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes, Argentina - renamed in 2010

The Estadio Cordoba was built in preparation for the 1978 World Cup and would end up being renamed after Argentina's hero at that tournament. Mario Kempes was a prolific 23-year-old striker for Valencia when the World Cup rolled around in 1978, and he would go on to score six goals, including two in the final against Netherlands, as La Albiceleste lifted the famous trophy for the very first time.

He became one of only three players to ever win the competition as well as the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball all in the same edition and forever wrote his name into Argentinian football history. In 2010, Estadio Cordoba, a sporadic home for the Argentina national team but also to several top-flight teams, was renamed in Kempes' honour.

5 Garrincha

This stadium in Brazil was initially built in 1974, with a capacity of 45,000, before it was renovated in the 2010s in time for the 2014 World Cup and is now the second-biggest football stadium in Brazil, behind only the Maracana. It sporadically hosts national team matches as well as providing a home for several local teams in the Brasilia area.

It was named after the legendary footballer Garrincha, who was famed for his dribbling technique and inspiring Brazil to World Cup success in 1958 and 1962. The winger won 50 caps for his national team and scored 12 times, and his nation never lost a competitive match when fielding both him and Pele.

6 Giuseppe Meazza

San Siro/Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, Inter Milan - renamed in 1980

The San Siro is one of the biggest and most iconic football stadiums in world football and is shared by two titans of Italian football. Milan fans know the ground only as the San Siro, while Inter Milan fans choose to call the stadium the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in honour of one of their greatest ever players.

Meazza spent thirteen years at Inter Milan between 1927 and 1940 before returning to the club for a brief spell after World War Two. The striker scored 284 goals in 409 matches for Nerazzurri, helping them win three Serie A titles, and had three stints as their manager before his death in 1979. A year later, the San Siro was officially named in his honour, a gesture only recognised by Inter Milan fans, despite Meazza also spending two years as a Milan player.

7 Pele

Estadio Rei Pele, CRB and CSA - built in 1970

Despite Pele's gigantic status in the game, the stadium named in his honour is one of the more modest ones on this list. With its name literally translating to King Pele Stadium, the stadium was built in 1970, the same year Pele became the first and only player to win three World Cups, and the first football match played there was won by his team, Santos.

However, Santos have never been tenants of the ground, instead being joint-owned by second-tier side Clube de Regatas (CRB) and third-tier outfit Centro Sportivo Alagoano (CSA). The capacity of the stadium is 19,105, and it also houses a museum named after another footballer Dida, who was one of the most famous players to come from the region of Alagoas.

8 Ferenc Puskas

Puskas Arena, Hungary - built in 2019

Ferenc Puskas is one of the most famous footballers to have ever lived and left an enormous impression on every team he played for. The forward was the star and captain of Hungary's famous national team in the 1950s, which was nicknamed 'the Mighty Magyars' and was also a prolific goalscorer for Budapest Honved before he was forced to flee the country after the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.

Having scored 84 goals in 85 appearances for Hungary, the national stadium was renamed in his honour in 2002, and the name was carried over when the ground was demolished and rebuilt in 2017. Having re-opened in 2019, the Puskas Arena hosted numerous important matches when the football calendar was disrupted by COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, including Champions League and Euro 2020 games, and was also chosen as the venue for the 2023 Europa League final, in which Sevilla beat Roma.

9 Johan Cruyff

Johan Cruyff Arena, Ajax - renamed in 2017

Johan Cruyff is regarded as one of the most influential footballers of all time, featuring as the star of the Netherlands team in the 1970s that transformed football forever with their brand of 'Total Football'. He was also the star of the Ajax team who won three consecutive European Cups between 1971 and 1973.

In total, Cruyff spent a combined 11 years playing for the Amsterdam club, making 326 appearances and scoring 228 goals, as well as winning 16 major honours, while he also managed the club for three years between 1985 and 1988. Following his death in 2016, Ajax's 55,000-seater stadium, formerly known as the Amsterdam Arena, was renamed in the forward's honour.

10 Diego Maradona

Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Napoli - renamed in 2020

Diego Maradona is one of the greatest footballers to have ever played the game, and he earned icon status during his time with Napoli in the 1980s. Two years after breaking the world-record transfer fee upon signing for Barcelona, the Argentinian broke it again in 1984 when he made the surprise move to Napoli for £6.9m.

Maradona immediately became captain of the Italian side and helped them become the first southern side in Italian football to ever win the league title in 1987 and again in 1990, as well as leading them to UEFA Cup glory in 1989. He made 257 appearances and scored 115 goals in seven years with the club and upon his death in 2020, Napoli's stadium was remamed in his honour.

Estadio Diego Armando Maradona, Argentinos Juniors - renamed in 2004

Maradona's legacy in the game is so enormous that he already had a stadium named after him prior to his death. The attacking midfielder burst onto the scene in Argentina with Argentinos Juniors, making his professional debut for the club in 1976 at the age of just 15, which made him the youngest player in Argentinian top flight history until Sergio Aguero broke the record in 2003.

He would spend the first four years of his career with the club before joining Boca Juniors in 1981 for £1m, a huge amount of money for Argentinos Juniors, and they also received a sell-on fee when Maradona signed for Barcelona a year later for £5m. After Argentinos Juniors renovated their ground in 2004, the stadium was renamed in Maradona's honour for his services to the club and football in Argentina as a whole.