Background and instructions
Leicester moved to The Walkers Stadium in 2002 after 111 years at their old ground, known as Filbert Street. Walkers stadium came as a result of ongoing talks about building a new stadium which had been in peoples minds since the mid 70's.

City had plans of builiding a 40 000 all seater at Bede Island, but that never happened and the land at Freemans Wharf, nearby the old ground became the place to build the new 32 500 seater stadium.

The ground was completed to the opening of the 2002-2003 season. The first game played at the stadium was a friendly against Athletic Bilbao. Today the record attandance at the ground is from a game against Newcastle in 2003, when 32 148 spectators attended.

The record of an event at The Walkers Stadium is from a rugby game in 2006 between Leicester Tigers and Bath. 32 488 visited the ground. There are no segregations between fans in Rugby, thats why the ground could be filled to limit.

Opening
The stadium was officially opened by former Leicester City player Gary Lineker (pic). The date was 23rd of July 2002.



Linker arrived at the ground in a Walkers lorry. Tiko scored the first goal at the ground, when he put Athletic Bilbao in the lead. The first Leicester player to score was Jordan Stewart who equalised.

Brian Deane scored the first two league goals at the ground when Leicester opened the 2002-2003 season with a great 2-0 win against Watford.

Ownership
The £37 million cost of the new stadium, combined with relegation from the Premier League, the collapse of the English transfer market due to the introduction of the transfer window and the collapse of the ITV Digital TV contract meant that Leicester went into receivership shortly after moving to the ground.

Birse construction who had built the stadium therefore lost a large part of their fee, and they withdrew from any further football ground construction.

Future
In October 2006 when Milan Mandaric took over the controll of Leicester City, info are that he bought the club for a fee of £25 million with £15 million as a sum just for the stadium. Mandaric also had a vision that the club could expand the capacity to
55 000 when and if the club returned to Premier League status.

Major Events
The stadium have hosted international games. The club were hosts for the match between England and Serbia Montenegro in 2003. Goals from Steven Gerrard and Joe Cole gave England a 2-1 win.

There has also other games such as a friendly between Brazil and Jamaica and games for the England U.21 side.