Stade de la Meinau
football stadium in Strasbourg, France
The Stade de la Meinau (French pronunciation: [stad də la mɛno]), commonly known as "la Meinau", is a football stadium in Strasbourg, France. It is the home ground of RC Strasbourg and has also hosted international matches, including one game of the 1938 World Cup, two games of Euro 1984 and the final of the Cup Winners' Cup in 1988. La Meinau has also been used as a venue for concerts and a Mass by John Paul II in 1988. The stadium is owned by the Strasbourg municipality and is rented by the RC Strasbourg.
History
On 1 April 1914, Strasbourg was still part of Germany following the Franco-Prussian War. RC Strasbourg, then called FC Neudorf, signed a 300 Mark lease to use the Haemmerlé Garten, essentially a pitch surrounded by the woods in the then mainly rural district of Meinau. This would eventually serve as the ground where the stadium was constructed. Between 1906 and 1914, the pitch had been used by another team, FC Frankonia, and several lawsuits were necessary to evict that team from the ground. Construction eventually proceeded and was completed in 1921 with a capacity of 30,000. During the 1938 FIFA World Cup, La Meinau hosted a first-round game that saw Brazil eliminate Poland 6–5 after extra-time thanks to a hat-trick by Leônidas who scored one of the first bicycle kicks in the history of football.
“Stade de la Meinau” enters the record as football stadium in Strasbourg, France. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stade, Meinau and football can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q374883. Authority coordinates are 48.559, 7.757. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1984, 1988 and 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stade de la Meinau” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.