FC Gspon’s Ottmar Hitzfeld stadium - Highest pitch in Europe

Gspon, a Swiss village high in the Alps, is home to the highest football pitch in all of Europe, and the only place on the continent where the boys chasing the balls must be at least as fit as the men kicking them.

Ottmar Hitzfeld stadium is carved into a mountainside 2,000 meters above sea level, so when a ball goes over the protective netting — something that happens seven to 10 times per game — it’s a long way down to retrieve it.

“We lose a lot of balls,” striker Lucas Furrer says.

FC Gspon is little more than a village team, but every player who steps onto the pitch remembers it as if he’d played at San Siro or Bernabeu.

The field, surrounded by vertiginous peaks near the resort of Zermatt, was built on one of the few patches flat enough to hold it. There wasn’t enough room for a proper pitch, so the team plays on a three-quarter-size field akin to a five-a-side field. The turf is artificial, because grass won’t grow at this altitude. And because the village is too high for traffic, players arrive by cable car.

“The air is quite thin,” Furrer says and adds: “It’s quite hard to breathe here, but we’re used to it. For the other teams it’s harder trying to adjust to the altitude so that’s a little bit an advantage for us.”

This is something of a concern for the rulemakers at FIFA. Five years ago, FIFA banned international matches at altitudes greater than 2,750 meters. The ban was lifted a year later after vociferous objections from South American countries like Bolivia, where Estadio Hernando Siles in La Paz sits a breathless 3,600 meters above sea level. Andean nations argued they were being discriminated against through no fault of their own, and altitude provides only a small advantage once players have acclimatized to the thinner air.

Not that FC Gspon needs an unfair advantage. The team finished third in its league last year.

“We might be known for the pitch,” says Roland Abgottspon, the coach and team founder, “but we’re a serious team.”