By buckeye 
So I got this idea after chatting with my mate at the pub about how his kid couldn’t place half the Premier League teams on a map. Wild, right? Figured I’d whip up something visual myself.
Collecting Stadium Locations
Started by googling every single club’s official stadium address – 20 teams in total. Man, some of these websites hide their addresses like buried treasure! Had to dig through “Contact Us” pages and sponsorship fine print. Wrote down each location in my trusty notepad app, double-checking postcodes against Google Maps street view to avoid embarrassing mistakes.
Choosing My Mapping Tool
Looked at several free options but settled on that simple drag-and-drop map builder everyone uses. Didn’t need fancy heatmaps – just clear pins with club badges. Spent forever resizing team logos to uniform dimensions in Paint so they wouldn’t look messy.
My toolkit essentials:
- Plain digital map canvas
- Transparent PNG team logos from league website
- Google Sheets for coordinate tracking
- Tea. Lots of tea.
Plotting Nightmare
Oh boy, the London clubs nearly broke me! Six teams crammed in one city meant pins overlapping like crazy. Had to offset Chelsea and Fulham’s markers toward the Thames to prevent visual clutter. Nearly smashed my keyboard when Tottenham’s pin kept snapping to wrong grid coordinates.
Northern clusters weren’t much better – Everton and Liverpool needed careful spacing even though their stadiums are practically neighbors. Manchester was easier since City’s Etihad sits noticeably east of Old Trafford.
Design Adjustments
Added tiny home kit color accents under each pin so even without reading labels, you’d recognize Arsenal’s red or Newcastle’s black-white stripe. The real MVP move? Including each stadium’s nickname like “Stamford Bridge” in mouse-over text – makes fans feel that hometown connection.
Final Polish
Zoomed out to check the whole UK and realized coastal teams looked isolated. Added subtle wave textures along shorelines near Brighton and Southampton. Almost forgot the Welsh exception! Nearly left Cardiff off the English map before remembering Swansea got relegated.
Here’s what makes this map actually useful:
- Toggle between standard/satellite view
- Search filter by region
- Derby match indicators (like North London clash)
Hit publish after triple-checking Brentford’s new community stadium location. Of course five minutes later some geezer tweets that I’ve misplaced West Ham by 200 meters. Might need to become a London cabbie for the next update!
plano