For those of us quixotic enough to hope for Scottish success in any sport, there is good news. Scotland has been declared a 2026 World Cup winner even before the final match has been played. Yes, you read that right.
Victory was sealed early on in the championship, in fact, at Scotland’s first match in the Group C opener against Haiti at Boston’s Gillette Stadium. This was when an estimated 50,000 travelling fans delivered a thunderous 125-decibel rendition of 'Flower of Scotland'. Turns out this is the loudest noise ever recorded at a World Cup match, lifting Scotland and its supporters to a well-deserved top place in the world. For comparison, a goal by host nation US versus Australia recorded by seismometers around the Seattle stadium (a University of Washington ongoing project) was only welcomed by the equivalent of a 70-decibel roar. Seattle researchers have been more interested in the Richter scale magnitude readings as opposed to sound intensity. For example, during the 2025 Major League Baseball playoffs, the Seattle Mariner fans generated ‘quake’ readings of 3.0 to 3.2.
The enviable Scottish decibel achievement does, however, raise some interesting questions of a geotechnical and structural integrity nature, probably not ones that preoccupy World Cup football fans during the frenzy of a match. Basically the issue is whether stadiums are well enough built to accommodate the crowd chanting, jumping up and down, stamping, not to mention the synchronised Mexican Wave and Viking Row.
At the risk of being morbid, the modern era has witnessed a number of catastrophic disasters at football venues, usually associated with spectators being crushed by crowd surges. Structural failures have been rare. In Europe the most notorious crowd-related incidents were at Ibrox, Glasgow (1971, 66 dead), Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow (1982, 66 officially declared dead, but some suspect over 300 actually perished), Heysel, Brussels (1985, 39 dead), and Hillsborough, Sheffield (1989, 97 dead). There have been worse elsewhere in the world, the deadliest being at Estadio Nacional, Lima, in 1964 when an estimated 328 people were killed after a pitch invasion during an Olympic qualifying match between Peru and Argentina.
Question of a geotechnical and structural integrity.
The nearest to structural inadequacy in recent times in the UK was in 1985, when the Bradford City ground was subject to a disastrous fire during a Third Division league match against Lincoln City. A build-up of litter under the main wooden grandstand (about which there had been warnings), was probably ignited by a discarded cigarette. It resulted in the deaths of 55 spectators. Ironically, the stand had been due for a steel replacement at the end of the season. The tragedy and the subsequent public inquiry acted as a catalyst for safety improvements in many football grounds in the UK over the next decades. In France in 1992, a stand at Bastia’s Furiani Stadium in Corsica collapsed before a French Cup semi-final against Olympique de Marseille, killing 18 and injuring more than 2300.
Happily, Europe at least has been spared further tragedies in the twenty-first century. To build structurally safe stadiums is obviously a major undertaking in which more than crowd behaviour has to be taken into account. Geotechnical surveys assess soil stability, groundwater levels, and seismic risks to ensure the site can support the massive loads of a stadium. Dead loads include the weight of the structure itself, while live loads account for thousands of fans, equipment, and temporary installations. Dynamic loads from wind, seismic activity, etc. require advanced modelling and resilient design with steel and concrete. Cantilevered roofs are an architectural art in themselves. In addition, there is a whole range of technology for structural monitoring over time, and these days even high-resolution cameras, which can observe millimetres of structural movement and acceleration during a game.
This is all very reassuring, but modern stadiums are also designed to generate as much noise as possible to create a competitive atmosphere and encourage the home team. In Europe the gold standard is Signal Iduna Park, Dortmund, Germany, which features the ‘Yellow Wall’, a single-tiered, steep standing terrace that funnels the chants of 25,000 die-hard fans straight onto the pitch. Many other grounds have similar architecture, often enabled by roof materials able to reflect sound downwards into the playing area.
Should World Cup fans be alarmed when their enthusiasm causes the stadium to shake, as can happen? Dr Roland Kromanis, a leading researcher in structural health monitoring at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, has some reassuring words. ‘The engineering challenge isn’t to eliminate the vibrations but to ensure they remain within acceptable limits. The slight shaking you feel is often the structure flexing the way it was meant to, not a sign that it’s about to collapse.’
Stadiums designed to generate as much noise as possible.
One suspects not everyone will agree when he adds, ‘It is more fun if you can feel the stadium come alive. The upper overhanging sections, for example, can experience slightly more vibrations than the lower sections, and they also offer good visibility. You can feel the movement and the energy of the crowd, and this makes people feel physically connected to the crowd and the event itself.’
Views expressed in Crosstalk are solely those of the author, who can be contacted at andrew@andrewmcbarnet.com.
