Althawra Sports City Stadium

The concrete floodlight gantry stretches wide above the main stand, a heavy beam of steel and concrete against the sky.

This is the Althawra Sports City Stadium, though for many years it was known as the Ali Mohsen al-Muraisi Stadium. It sits on Al-Thawra Street in the capital, Sanaa, in a city that has seen its share of violence. The ground opened in 1986, a time when Yemen was still divided into two separate nations. For a while longer, it served as the home for both the North Yemen national team and the Republic of Yemen side. It has hosted the likes of Al-Ahli Sana'a and Al-Wahda Sana'a, teams that have struggled to play their matches on their own soil for years.

The stands are large enough for 30,000 people, a figure that feels generous given the state of the place. The highest crowd ever recorded here was 25,000 for a FIFA World Cup qualification match in 2002, a day that must have felt hopeful in a country that rarely gets to dream that way.

The wars have been bad to the stadium. The damage began in 2015, when coalition airstrikes effectively destroyed the structure. It was struck again in 2016, and then again in December of last year. The concrete is scarred, the roof is open to the sky in places, and the pitch is no longer safe for the national team. Yemen have not played a home game here since before the first bomb fell. They play in Qatar now, thousands of miles away, while the stadium sits in the middle of the country, broken and waiting.