Why old grounds face the way they do
Walk into any of Britain's Victorian or Edwardian football stadiums on a late afternoon in winter and the first thing that hits you is the light. At grounds like Everton's Goodison Park or Sheffield United's Bramall Lane, the low sun streams directly across the pitch from one end, blinding keepers at the Park End or forcing the Kop to squint into the glare. This is not a design flaw. It is the physical record of a decision made decades before anyone had written down rules about where the sun ought to sit during a match.
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FIFA now recommends that stadiums run on a predominately north-south axis, with the main stand positioned so the sun stays behind it at likely kick-off times. The FA refines this guidance further: the ideal bearing runs between 285° northwest to 20° northeast, with 345° the preferred compass point. Yet thousands of seats in Britain's older grounds face angles that ignore this entirely. The reason is simple. These grounds were built before the guidance existed, and their orientation was fixed by what the site allowed, not by what the game later recommended.
The Old Ground Pattern
The pattern repeats across former industrial cities. A club forms in the 1880s or 1890s, rents a patch of wasteland between a railway embankment and a terrace of back-to-backs, and builds a simple stand along whichever boundary gives the longest straight edge. The pitch runs parallel to that stand because the stand defines the touchline. Decades later, when FIFA publishes its stadium guidelines and the FA issues its pitch-management manuals, the geometry is already locked in concrete and brick.
FIFA acknowledges this explicitly. Its orientation guidance notes that stadiums should consider hemisphere, latitude, time of year, prevailing wind, and existing shading or topography. The German Football Association's sport facility manual is blunter: large playing fields should generally run north-south to reduce glare, but "other orientations are permissible when topography is difficult or the plot shape is unfavorable." The FA makes the same allowance, stating that while football pitches broadly need north-south orientation, "this is dependent on the shape of the site."
What this means in practice is that the ideal arrived after the reality. The 345° bearing that the FA now recommends could only be implemented at grounds built after the guidance was issued, or at those with sufficient land and money to reorient. For everyone else, the pitch faces the way the plot dictated.
What the Laws Actually Allow
The confusion deepens when fans assume that pitch dimensions somehow enforce orientation. They do not. FIFA documentation recommends a field of play of 105 metres by 68 metres. The touchlines must be longer than the goal lines. Beyond that, the laws are geometrically permissive.
FIFA's stadium guidelines add one fixed relationship: "the touchlines shall be parallel to the orientation of the stadium." This is a drafting constraint, not a directional one. It means that once a club chooses which way the stadium faces, the pitch markings must align with that choice. The orientation does not emerge from the pitch dimensions. The pitch dimensions are fitted to the orientation the site demands.
This is why two grounds with identical pitch sizes can face opposite directions. The 105 by 68 metre rectangle is infinitely rotatable. Only the surrounding infrastructure, the stands, the access roads, and the property boundaries fix it in place.
Why Sunlight Still Matters
Modern guidance emphasises north-south orientation for reasons that become obvious the moment you sit in a misaligned stand. FIFA recommends positioning the main stand so "the sun is behind it at likely match times," which in practice means afternoon fixtures in winter when the sun sits low in the southern sky. The FA warns explicitly that "pitch orientation can have a significant impact because setting sun can cause considerable disruption," affecting both players tracking the ball and spectators watching the play.
The DFB's manual adds that spectators suffer alongside players, noting that large fields should run north-south to reduce "glare for players and spectators from the low evening sun." FIFA's guidelines also cite sunlight and ventilation as factors that promote grass growth, giving groundskeepers another reason to prefer the aligned axis.
These are genuine performance concerns. A goalkeeper facing into a winter sunset cannot see a high cross. A linesman running the opposite touchline loses the silhouette of the ball against the glare. The grass in the sun-shadow line grows unevenly, stressing the playing surface. Yet none of these problems can retroactively rotate a stand built in 1892.
Why the Site Wins
The hierarchy of constraints becomes clear when you trace how older grounds expanded. A club begins with a single stand and open banking on three sides. As crowds grow, they cover the other three sides, but each new stand must connect to existing foundations, existing access tunnels, and existing streets. The railway embankment that formed the eastern boundary in 1890 still forms it in 1950, even when the club has money for a full oval. The main stand faces west because the only available land for development lay to the west, and the pitch had to run perpendicular to the longest dimension of that land.
FIFA lists "existing shading or topography" among orientation considerations precisely because these factors often predate the stadium itself. The FA's note that orientation "is dependent on the shape of the site" acknowledges that the site chooses the axis, not the other way around. When the DFB permits exceptions for "difficult topography," it is recognising that some locations make the ideal bearing physically impossible.
This is not historical accident. It is historical sequence. The guidance came later.
What a Visitor Notices Today
The practical consequences arrive on matchday. At grounds where the main stand faces east, the afternoon sun pours over the roofline and into the eyes of the home supporters. Where the pitch runs east-west, one end stands in shadow while the other bakes. Visiting supporters learn quickly which stand gets the weather: the away end at certain grounds earns a reputation for exposure that has nothing to do with the quality of the architecture and everything to do with its compass bearing.
FIFA's guidance that the sun should sit behind the main stand assumes a particular model of stadium use, with the majority of spectators in that stand and the most expensive seats protected from glare. At older grounds, the economics were reversed. The working-class ends needed covering first, and the main stand grew organically from whatever orientation allowed the longest continuous structure. The result is a patchwork where sun protection varies by ticket price and by decade of construction.
The Exception Becomes the Rule
FIFA notes that north-south orientation is "the most common stadium orientation," which is true globally but misleading locally. In Britain's football heartlands, the older the ground, the more likely it is to face some intermediate bearing, some compromise between the available land and the later ideal.
This is not failure. It is inheritance. The ground still faces the way the land allowed, even when the January sun proves that another axis would have been better. The stand still stands where the 1890s committee could afford to build it, even when the 2020s spectator shields their eyes. The pitch is 105 metres by 68 metres not because that size demanded this orientation, but because the orientation was already fixed, and the pitch was drawn to fit.
The next time the sun catches you full in the face at a corner flag, remember: you are not looking at a mistake. You are looking at the site plan.
Capacity and access details are quoted from the source named in the piece; grounds are rebuilt and relicensed.