"I don't like football very much - that's weire, I know." admits Eduardo Arroyo, the founder of Spanish practice Nomad Arquitectos. The hint of embarrassment is only there because Arroyo has just completed a EUD10m (￡6.9m) stadium for Barakaldo football club. He may not be a football fan, but he can appreciate a good story, and the roots of second division Barakaldo, founded in 1917, gave him a way in to his design for the club's Lasesarre stadium. Barakaldo is a 10-minute drive out of Bilbao, the birthplace of Spanish football. It was here, in Spain's once great industrial heartland, that English steel workers and sailors taught the Spanish to play the beautiful game. "We used to hear all the old stories from our grandfathers about how workers who came over on English ships would stop working and then draw lines in the grass to start playing this game," recalls Arroyo. This combination of industrial history and local football lore led Arroyo to believe that he could do something different in Barakaldo.
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