Leicester’s King Power Stadium Set To Host Community Shield

An aerial image of Leicester City's King Power Stadium Leicester City’s King Power Stadium is set to host next season’s Community shield, as Wembley will be unavailable on the day of the fixture.

The 32,000-capacity stadium is the favourite to land the season’s annual curtain-raiser ahead of Leeds’ Elland Road, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, Aston Villa’s Villa Park and West Ham’s London Stadium, who have all showed an interest in staging the fixture. The showpiece event on July 31st will be played away from the national stadium for the first time in ten years due to Wembley hosting the Women’s European Championship final.

The Community Shield will see the Premier League champions, either Manchester City or Liverpool, take on the winners of this season’s FA Cup Final between Chelsea and Liverpool. Should Jurgen Klopp’s men win both competitions then they would face league runners-up, City.

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The Premier League is set to start a week earlier than usual next season because of the winter break for the Qatar World Cup, meaning the Community Shield will take place in the unusual slot of late July. Both the Emirates Stadium and the London Stadium showed their interest in keeping the game in London but it looks as though their efforts will be rebuffed. Should Leicester be officially confirmed as the host for the game, then fans can expect a steep drop in ticket availability due to an almost 60,000 seat reduction in capacity, compared to Wembley. However, others will welcome the move, particularly fans of Liverpool and Man City after the travel difficulties that ensued for both sets of supporters during last month’s FA Cup semi-final at Wembley. Fans were left reeling after direct rail services to London were cancelled on the weekend of the clash leading to thousands of empty seats on show.

In 2012, Villa Park became the last ground other than Wembley to hold the fixture as Wembley was being used for the London Olympics. Aston Villa were hoping to host the clash again this summer but are unlikely to beat Leicester to the punch.

Inside Leicester City's King Power Stadium, looking down on the pitch