On October 31st 1903 Hampden Park stadium opened in Glasgow as the home of Queen’s Park Football Club.
Many people don’t know that there was another stadium in Glasgow previously to the one we know now. The site of the first Hampden Park is now occupied by railway lines and a lawn bowling club named Hampden Bowling Club. It opened on 25th October 1873 and closed 10 years later. It was the first enclosed stadium with turnstiles in the country. The original stadium,hosted several Scotland international matches; it was first used on 2 March 1878 for a 7–2 win against England, and a 9–0 win against Wales followed on 23 March.[6] It hosted four more matches, the last being a 5–0 win over Wales on 25 March 1882. It also hosted the first Scottish Cup final which saw Queen’s Park beat Clydesdale 2–0.
Hampden was the biggest stadium in the world, with a capacity of more than 100,000, which was further extended in 1927 and 1937 to a peak of 150,000.
It would hold this record until 1950 when The Maracanã Stadium in Rio, it held and incredible 199,854 for the final.
Hampden Park at Mount Florida opened for a league game on this day in 1903 Queen’s Park defeated Celtic 1–0 , three years late it held it’s first international when Scotland played England in front of a crowd of 102,741 people, which established Hampden as the primary home of the Scotland team.
Attendances continued to increase during the remainder of the 1900s, as 121,452 saw the 1908 Scotland v England match. A new world record of 127,307 were in attendance to see Scotland play England in 1912.
World record crowds attended Scotland matches against England in 1931 and 1933 and it was 33 that saw the first team from mainland Europe, Austria visit the stadium. Further ground improvements increased the official capacity of the ground to 183,388 in 1937, but the SFA were only allowed to issue 150,000 tickets for games. The 1937 Scotland v England match had an official attendance of 149,415, but at least 20,000 more people entered the ground without tickets.
During WW2 a government official presented an order demanding that both the Hampden and Lesser Hampden pitches be ploughed and used to plant vegetables, but the Queen’s Park committee chose to ignore the order and the government did not pursue it.
Hampden hosted the 1960 European Cup Final; Real Madrid defeated 7–3 Eintracht Frankfurt with 130,000 people in attendance. By the time the next European cup final was held in 1976 between Bayern Munich of West Germany and Saint-Étienne of France the attendance had fallen to 54,670. The French complained about the goalposts stating that two of their efforts which hit the square crossbar and rebounded into play would have resulted in goals if it had been round!
Hampden was aging and the capacity was cut 81,000, redevelopment started in October 1981 and completed in 1986, reduced the capacity to 74,370 and cost £3 million. After the cancellation of the annual Scotland v England fixture in 1989, questions were raised as to whether Scottish football required a separate national stadium, other venues were mooted but the SFA and the stadium committee rejected these and after securing a grant of £3.5 million in 1992, work to begin on a £12 million project to convert Hampden into an all-seater stadium, Hampden was re-opened for a friendly match between Scotland and Netherlands on 23 March. The final stage of the renovation began in November 1997, costing £59 million, inevitably the price soared but Hampden was re-opened for the 1999 Scottish Cup Final. The ground now has a capacity of 51,866.
The stadium was again fit to host the top matches and Real Madrid were again victorious when Hampden Park hosted the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final, defeating Bayer Leverkusen, with Zinedine Zidane scoring the winning goal with a left-foot volley.
In 2012, a Scotland women’s national football team game was played at Hampden for the first time, when it hosted the first leg of a European Championship qualifying playoff against Spain and Hampden was temporarily converted into an athletics stadium for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the European Championship in 2020 the National stadium has been chosen by Uefa as on of 13 venues for the competition and I am sure the people of Scotland will welcome whoever is chosen to play in Glasgow.
With the advent of big stadium concerts Hampden has been used to host a wealth of worldwide acts Genesis and Paul Young performed in the first concert at Hampden, in 1987. The Rolling Stones played there in 1990, during their Urban Jungle Tour. Since the redevelopment of Hampden was completed in 1999, many acts have performed there, including The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi, Eagles, U2,Oasis, George Michael, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Diamond, Take That, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Pink, Paul McCartney, Rihanna, and Beyoncé.
In 2018 the SFA )Scottish Football Association)agreed a £5m fee for the national stadium with Queen’s Park, just this year it was used to host games in the delayed Euro 2020 matches. Queen’s Park played their last home game at Scotland’s national stadium on Saturday March 20th 2021 after the SFA ended their lease, they beat Stranraer 3 - 0
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