Football Ground Map
Football Ground Map
Tenerife is an island of (almost) year-round sun, so it's not hard to see why over 2 million Brits visit each year. And whilst Tenerife has a number of great tourist attractions (read: Siam Park), I've always found it quite puzzling that only 0.8% of fans registered on this website have been to watch CD Tenerife play.
I guess I'm quite a good example. Despite my obvious love for football and football stadiums, in (at a guess) 20+ holidays to the island, I'd never actually watched CD Tenerife play.
You see, the wife has a gift. She's the chief planner of the family's holidays and somehow, she always manages to book our breaks when the local football club is away from home. That's why there's so many brown markers on my map - I've been to see a lot of stadiums, but not actually watched football there.
The planning of holidays follows the same pattern. She decides where we want to go, I look for the closest football grounds to our destination, then check the fixture list and find that they're all playing away!
However, Easter 2022 proved to be different. The kids are 5 and 9 now and both have a big interest in football (both are season ticket holders at Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane) - so the possibility of going to a CD Tenerife match was very much on.
The Spanish aren't ones for organisation though, so we knew the stated Sunday 17:15 kick-off time was likely to change, especially as it was Easter weekend. We kept an eye on the official website in the weeks leading up to the holiday and were happy when the date and time were confirmed.
| Team | CD Tenerife |
|---|---|
| Stadium | Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez |
| Year opened | 1922 |
| Capacity | 22,800 |
| Ticket price | €13, €18, €22 or €31 |
| Atmosphere |  |
| Overall enjoyment | |
| Visited by | Rob (footballgroundmap.com owner) |
| Matches watched | CD Tenerife 3-1 Fuenlabrada (17 April 2022) CD Tenerife 1-2 FC Cartagena (29 May 2022) |
CD Tenerife were founded in 1912 and spent much of their early existence in the Spanish 4th tier. The club were promoted to the second division in the early 1950s. Their first season in La Liga ended with relegation in 1962. The club spent the next 30 years in the 2nd and 3rd tiers before enjoying 10 successive seasons in La Liga between 1989 and 1999.
This was by far the club's most successful spell, including two 5th placed finishes in 1993 and 1996. These campaigns saw them qualify for the old UEFA Cup. In 1994 they reached the last 16 before being knocked out by Juventus. CDT beat Juve 2-1 at home before losing 3-0 in Turin. The second European campaign in 1996/7 saw them beat Lazio 5-3 at home and Feyenoord 4-2 away before losing the semi-final to Schalke 2-1 on aggregate.
The club has spent most of the 21st Century in the second division, other than a couple of season in the top flight (2001/2002 and 2009/2010) and a couple in the 3rd tier (2011/2012 and 2012/2013). CDT did make the play-off final in 2021/2022 beating Canarian rivals Las Palmas along the way, but lost 3-1 to Girona in the final.
There's a number of famous players have have worn the CD Tenerife shirt in the past. Our pick of the bunch includes:
Tenerife's traditional colours are white shirts with blue shorts and blue socks. Away colours vary by season, but lately have featured a lot of darker blues and pinks.
In terms of buying a shirt, there is no official club shop at the stadium (that I could see), but there are a number of street sellers with booths which feature all the traditional football gear including shirts, scarfs, hats, caps, footballs, key rings, pin badges etc. On our first visit we bought the kids a kit each (my son went for the white home one, my daughter chose the pink away one). Each kit set us back around €30.
You can buy shirts before the game, with many resort tat shops offering Tenerife shirts alongside the more popular kits of Barca, Real Madrid and a plethora of other European teams. Watch out for fakes here though - it's pretty easy to spot a fake from one of Europe's big teams, not quite so easy with CD Tenerife. My advice would be to purchase at the ground to ensure authenticity. If you're super organised, you could always check out Classic Football Shirts before you go.
Tenerife play at the Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez. The ground has a capacity of just under 23,000 and was first opened in 1922. It is the 2nd largest stadium in the Canary Islands, after Las Palmas' Estadio Gran Canaria.
The entrance gates are unmanned and have a scanner to let you in. Rather confusingly, the tickets are printed with a barcode at one end and a QR code at the other - this seemed to cause a lot of confusion as nobody knew which end to hold under the scanner!
Once inside the ground, our bags were searched and bottle tops removed from our drinks - pretty annoying and slightly ironic when we were allowed to keep our sun cream bottles, which were actually much heavier (and I could have thrown much further, if I were that way inclined!).
The ground itself is an impressive oval shape and was celebrating its centenary year. The structure is two tiered the whole way around and the stands behind the goal are actually closer to the pitch than they look on TV.
We sat on the top tier of the uncovered stand opposite the TV cameras. The top tier is steeply banked and offers a very impressive view where even 6 footers in front of you won't spoil your view of the pitch.
There's no inside concourse, like you find in many English grounds, so sheltering from the sun on a hot day can be difficult. There is a sort of mezzanine level which runs all the way around the outside of the stadium though - this is where you'll find the open air toilets (which look 100 years old) and a number of snack kiosks.
Tenerife's island location is a good 2+ hour flight away from mainland Spain. As a result, very few away fans travel to the island (if any at all). The only real exception to this rule being if CDT are hosting the Canarian Derby against Las Palmas from nearby Gran Canaria.
It would be fair to expect that the atmosphere would be poor, but (from my experiences) that's far from the case. I found the atmosphere at Tenerife to be excellent. The home fans are loud and intimidating, which is a great achievement considering there's no fans to sing against.
In theory, the lack of away fans should make CD Tenerife matches pretty safe. However, it is worth noting a couple of things: 1) there are a group of stewards who keep a very close eye on one section of the crowd (Tenerife's "Ultras", known as the Frente Blanquiazul (Blue and White Front)) and 2) both matches I've attended have had police with full riot gear, including helmets and batons.
Neither of these things were a cause for concern, and at no time have we felt unsafe watching CDT. It was more of an amusement that there's more police in riot gear than there are away supporters. The police spent most of the match watching from the sidelines, only getting up at the end of each half to escort the referee to the tunnel (it wasn't particularly needed and seemed more like routine than anything else). They were also in action at the end of the match, providing safe passage for the away team to their coach (again, not really needed).
There are several kiosks located around the stadium which offer water, soft drinks and chocolate (Kit Kats, Twirls etc) and a number of giant bags of Spanish crisps. Prices were good with water €1,50 for a bottle and about €2,00 for a Coke. The queues at half time do get long though and service is slow - all drinks come in bottles which the staff then pour into cups... it would be much quicker if they just gave you the bottle! Waiting for 20 minutes for a bottle of water at half time meant that we missed the first 5 minutes of the 2nd half on our first visit there.
Note that there was no alcohol served inside the ground.
The stadium is Spanish and 100 years old. As a result, the facilities leave a little to be desired. They're functional, but don't expect luxuries such a toilet roll or soap!
The Spanish season runs almost in parallel with the English football season - the first round of matches usually kick off mid to late August with the last round being played in mid to late May. Their play-offs do often last into June, so if you're going late Spring/early Summer, you've still got a chance of seeing a match, even if the English season is over.
There are 3 options for buying tickets to see CD Tenerife:
Tickets can be purchased through the official CD Tenerife website. Currently this is only available in Spanish, but using Google Chrome will make your life easier as it can be set to automatically translate foreign websites. If you purchase at home, you'll need to print them out and take your paper ticket to the ground to gain admission.
Tickets are also available at the ground, and can be purchased on match day. However, the queues we saw pre-match were pretty long - we were glad we'd got our tickets beforehand.
The club also runs a network of selling locations around the island, often in local newsagents. My advice would be check to see if you have one near to you, and to buy from there if you can. There are outlets in the major tourist areas including Costa Adeje, Playa de las Americas and Los Cristianos. We used one in Los Cris for our first visit to CDT, and the owner was good at explaining where the best seats are and also making sure we knew where the ground was located (our chosen shop was close to CD Marino's ground and the shopkeeper made sure we knew CD Tenerife play in a different stadium).
The club offer 3 different types of ticket, dependent on where in the ground you would like to sit:
If you want to stay out of the sun, I'd recommend going for the €31 roofed stand - although you might be able to buy some of the behind the net tickets and still be in the shade of the roof, if you're lucky!
Tenerife do offer discounted kids' tickets, but strangely only on the first two rows of the lower tier. These tickets are really close to pitch level. If you prefer being a bit higher up, I'd recommended coughing up for adult tickets for the kids instead.
The stadium has a capacity of just under 23,000 - that's not much for an island with a population touching a million, but the club's recent lack of success means that sell-outs are relatively rare.
I went to watch CDT twice in the 2021/2022 season, with both crowds being around the 12,000 mark. However, the club did quality for the end of season play-offs against local rivals Las Palmas (from neighbouring island Gran Canaria). The first leg was whilst I was on the island and unfortunately I didn't get a ticket - I probably could have, if I'd gone to the ground before the match but I decided not to as a) I didn't want to lose holiday time driving up to the capital and back, only to do it again another day for the match (some groundhopper, right?) and b) I didn't want to take a ticket away from an actual Tenerife fan who wanted to go to their biggest match in years.
The play-off sell-out was a relatively rare event though. CD Tenerife usually average crowds in the mid to low teens. Their largest average attendance recently was back in the 2009/10 La Liga season, but the average was still less than 20,000 (around 87% full).
CD Tenerife play in the island's capital, Santa Cruz.
If you're in the Costa Adeje, Playa de las Americas or Los Cristianos areas of Tenerife, you have 4 options for getting to the stadium:
Spanish buses are operated by Titsa with routes available to view on Google Maps . There are two routes - one goes through a number of villages, but the other is pretty direct - taking you from Los Cristianos to the capital via just one stop at the airport. The overall journey time was about an hour each way.
However, Spanish public transport isn't best renowned for its ability to stick to a publicised timescale, and so this wouldn't be my recommendation - unless the game is early in the afternoon and you have plenty of choice of buses back to the resort.
The Armada Sur is a fans' group which runs coaches to matches. You can contact them via their official Facebook page to book a place on the coach.
We decided to hire a car as it gave us more flexibility to do things as and when we needed, plus the wife found us a very good deal - €55 for the day for a car from Sanasty. The guy who owns the company is an Everton fan and a popular YouTuber with many videos walking around Tenerife, showing people the sights.
The drive up from Los Cristianos is incredibly easy - straight up the TF1 for about 45 minutes, onto the TF4 for 2 minutes and you're there.
You can of course get one of the island's plentiful taxis to take you to the stadium. If you're in the south of the island, this is likely to set you back around €100 each way. So it's actually much cheaper to hire a car! If you really want to go by taxi, you can pre-book with Taxi Adeje.
If you're driving, there are several underground car parks close to the ground, but these seemed to be closely guarded and might have even been open to pre-bookings only - I'm not sure on that, but it did seem to be the case.
For ease, we parked at the Palmetum (a palm tree garden of some sort) right at the end of the TF4 motorway. We chose this one for a couple of reasons 1) it was free (I am a Yorkshireman, after all) and 2) it's incredibly easy to get to, right off the TF4 motorway (which meant not having to drive through central Santa Cruz). It is a bit of a hike to get up to the stadium from there (20 mins uphill), but as a family of walkers, we weren't put off. It just so happens that you also walk right past a rooftop McDonalds at the Meridiano shopping centre, which makes a great stop for dinner/tea too!
Absolutely. Plenty of Brits visit Tenerife each year, but only a small number of us go to watch CDT play.
To be fair, it's not hard to see why. You'll pass plenty of places selling day trips on boats or to see Mount Tiede, but you will see no ads for the football at all. If you didn't know Tenerife had a decent football team before you went, you'd be none the wiser when you got there. It's a sad state of affairs really, as there's so much potential for the club.
Speaking as a convert, I have really enjoyed my two trips (so far) to Tenerife's ground. It's dead easy to get to if you have a car, it's pretty cheap, and the football is of a good standard too. With Viaplay and YouTube, it's also easy to follow the team at home.
Rob is the owner of footballgroundmap.com. A Sheffield United fan and father of two, Rob loves nothing more than a good game of football whether that's watching the Blades or one his local non-League teams. He's somewhat of a traditionalist, preferring the older grounds to newer purpose-built ones.
Away from footballgroundmap.com, Rob works as an Ecommerce Development Project Manager for one of the UK's largest clothing retailers. He also owns and runs kick22.com, a system which allows junior and non-League clubs to create their own low cost website.
Sheffield United supporter • 107 grounds visited • 57/92
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