ESV-Stadion

The ground sits inside a larger municipal sports complex on the south-eastern edge of Ingolstadt, in the Ringsee district, and that setting explains a good deal about how it is used. That role belongs to the Audi-Sportpark, where FC Ingolstadt 04 play their league matches.

What the ESV-Stadion has instead is a full week. A ground kept for a fortnightly matchday wears differently from one that takes that kind of traffic, and the pitch here is worked hard.

It is also not solely a football ground. The markings, the goalposts and the shape of the playing area change with the calendar.

The stadium opened in 1932, and it has spent the decades since as a working municipal ground rather than a showpiece — the place where a club's academy graduate might mark his first start with a goal in front of a few hundred people, well before anyone at the Audi-Sportpark has heard the name.