On Wednesday, the finals of the handball World Cup begin and two of the quarter-finals will be played in a rebuilt Tele2 Arena in Stockholm. The arena, which normally hosts Hammarby’s and Djurgården’s home matches in the Allsvenskan football league, will welcome handball fans for the second time.
– We did the EC 2020 with the same solution and now we have the chance to refine it, says Robert Roos, who is responsible for the reconstruction, to SVT Sport and continues:
– In 2020, we brought in bleachers that we placed in the middle of the football field and then the bleachers didn’t go all the way out. But now we’ve built a grandstand that extends over the existing grandstand and then there are curves on it so it almost looks like it’s an arena within an arena.
25 trucks with material
Work on converting Tele2 into a handball arena began on January 8 this year.
Scaffolding materials and chairs for the stands were transported in 25 large trucks to the arena and took ten days for 25 people to assemble.
– It’s a hell of a process, that’s for sure, says Roos.
– The existing match light is specially designed for handball. What exists is adapted for football and it does not fit. So we have set up 144 large, moving Melodifestivalen lights, you could say. Plus a lot of other lights in the stands.
Test match on Tuesday
The temporary stand has a capacity of approximately 7,000 people, while the arena has a total capacity of around 22,000. Currently, around 15,000 tickets have been sold for Sweden’s quarter-final against Egypt.
On Tuesday evening, a test match was played between two girls’ teams to ensure that everything works as it should before the playoffs
– It seems to have gone well, says Roos.
The quarter-final between Sweden and Egypt will be played on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. SVT Sport reports the match live.
CUT: Hampus Wanne pays tribute to Sweden’s quarter-final opponent Egypt
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