The international break has left us with nothing to watch, so we have read 28,400 strangers' opinions of 34 football grounds. It went about as well as you would expect.

Cabin fever (noun): the restlessness, irritability and creeping boredom that set in when a person is shut away in one place for too long with nothing to do.

Football fans know it by another name: the international break. It isn’t the pleasant quiet of a summer off-season, with its transfer rumours and pre-season friendlies against Malaysian second-tier sides. It is emptier than that. The Thai League 1 table has been frozen after three matchweeks. The fixtures page shows nothing but a gap. You check the Predictor anyway, as if a result might have appeared overnight. It hasn’t. Matchweek four does not start until 9 October.

This happens to everyone. Players go missing, managers give interviews about “resetting”, supporters start having opinions on things they would normally ignore. By the second weekend, grown adults are ranking their favourite away-end toilets on social media. It is a strange, idle, faintly unhinged fortnight, and it has to be filled with something.

We found our something in the Guardian. Its long-running Knowledge column, which answers readers’ questions about football’s odder corners, took a query last week from Will Unwin: which football grounds have the highest and lowest Google ratings? A reader called Pete Tomlin then looked up every Football League ground, one at a time, which is exactly the sort of thing a person does during an international break.

His findings were tidy. English grounds sit in a narrow band between 4.0 and 4.7 stars. Anfield is top, with 4.7 from 54,546 reviews. Tottenham and Nottingham Forest’s City Ground also score 4.7, but lose out because Tomlin used the number of reviews as the tie-breaker. Oxford’s Kassam Stadium and Stevenage share the bottom on 4.0. “Not surprisingly,” Tomlin observed, “the bigger and more successful clubs tend to have the higher ratings.”

That is a reasonable conclusion for England. We wanted to know whether it holds for Thailand. So we did the same thing.

The method, such as it is

We took all 34 clubs in Thai League 1 and Thai League 2 for 2026-27 and found their grounds. That gives 34 stadiums, though not quite one per club:

• Pathum United and Bangkok United share the True BG Stadium. Bangkok United moved there from Thammasat at the start of last season.
• Pattani are sharing with Songkhla. Their home, the Rainbow Stadium, is being renovated, so their home games are at the Tinsulanonda Stadium in Songkhla. We have ranked both grounds, but the Rainbow Stadium is not being used at the moment.
• Rasisalai United are temporarily in Buriram. Their home ground in Sisaket, Koh Klang Nam, is being upgraded for the King’s Cup, so they are playing at Buriram City Stadium, the Khao Kradong ground. They are due back after 17 November. Again, both grounds are ranked, with the same caveat: Koh Klang Nam is not being used at the moment.

For each stadium we used Google’s main listing and recorded its star rating and number of reviews as they stood on 29 September 2026. Pitchaya Stadium in Nong Bua Lamphu has two listings, one on 4.4 from 111 reviews and a smaller one on 4.8 from 76. We used the bigger one. As with the Guardian, ties are split by the number of reviews: more reviews ranks higher.

A note on the quotes. Most reviews of Thai grounds are written in Thai, and the English versions below are Google’s own translations, exactly as Google shows them. Some meaning is lost on the way. Some is gained.

The winner nobody saw coming

Top of the Thai league of Google reviews is not Chang Arena, the 32,600-seat home of the champions. It is not even a Thai League 1 ground.

1. Chiang Mai Rajabhat University 100th Anniversary Stadium, Mae Rim (Chiangmai United, T2) — 5.0 (31 reviews)

A perfect score. Admittedly it comes from 31 reviews, which is fewer people than turn up to some Thai League 2 matches (on a good day!). But all but one of them gave it five stars. The ground is on Chiang Mai Rajabhat’s Mae Rim campus, in the hills north of the city. Reviewers love the mountain views and the grass, which one describes as “well-maintained and watered regularly, even during the dry season”. Another notes that the complex cost 510 million baht.

It also has the best five-star review of this whole exercise: “A good field, used only once in a lifetime, a breeding ground for mimosa plants.” One visitor gave it four stars and wrote only: “I want to rent an LED screen in Chiang Mai.” We hope they found one.

2. Chonburi Daikin Stadium (Chonburi, T1) — 4.7 (346)

This is the highest-rated Thai League 1 ground, and the only one in the whole country that matches Anfield’s 4.7. People like it more as a park than as a stadium. “Perhaps the best public park in Chonburi,” says one four-star review. Another four-star review just says “Open only on Mondays”, which is unhelpful and almost certainly untrue.

Parking is the one real complaint, and it produced our favourite one-star review of the whole survey: “The foreign football players of Chonburi parked their cars motionless like oxen.”

The 4.6 club

3. Chang Arena (Buriram United, T1) — 4.6 (10,413)

The reviews are as dominant as the club. Chang Arena has 10,413 reviews, more than a third of all 28,400 reviews across the 34 grounds. That is enough to win the tie-break at 4.6 easily. Even so, it is still less than a fifth of Anfield’s total.

The one-star reviews are mostly about the club shop. But one simply says “supachok is no fair play”, which seems a bit much. Another gives one star with the words “My mischievous daughter loves watching football”, which we choose to read as a warning rather than a complaint.

4. True BG Stadium (Pathum United and Bangkok United, T1) — 4.6 (1,588)

The ground was once a glass-bottle factory, which one reviewer mentions in a one-star review that is otherwise entirely positive. The one-star reviews here are mostly short. One reads “The field is beautiful.” Another reads “Laos.” A third, from 13 years ago, reads “Leo Stadium”, which was the ground’s old name and is, strictly speaking, a fact.

The most useful review is a week old. It warns that there is no ticket office, and that the writer missed 20 minutes of the match trying to buy a ticket online.

5. Ratchaburi Stadium (Ratchaburi, T1) — 4.6 (946)

This ground has the saddest review in the survey: “Game cancelled. Waterlogged pitch. Only travelled 9500 km to watch it.” It also has the most useful one, from ten years ago: “The contact number is incorrect. Please correct it. (It’s my number, and I receive a lot of calls.)” Someone, somewhere in Ratchaburi, has been fielding calls about kick-off times for a decade.

6. Sam Ao Stadium (Prachuap, T1) — 4.6 (166)

This one comes with a warning that is also a recommendation. “OK if you are a fan of Thai football,” writes a three-star reviewer. “So far away from the pitch you can’t see anything. Believe me that’s a good thing. Can take beer into the ground.”

7. Ruamjai Stadium, Loei Rajabhat University (Muang Loei United, T2) — 4.6 (114)

Nobody in Loei seems to have a bad word to say. The lowest review we could find is three stars, and it reads, in full, “The view is amazing.”

Midtable at 4.5

8. PAT Stadium (Port, T1) — 4.5 (1,181)

Port’s home ground is old, tight and loud. The one-star reviews can’t agree on why they are one-star reviews. “It’s a nice place to stay and relax,” reads one. “Bit dark,” reads another. The PAT is almost entirely without a roof, so this must be about either the humour of the Port faithful or the weather that night. A two-star review manages to say “The field looks great for playing football” and nothing else. Another two-star review is more honest: “The field surface was good, the seating was bad, and the fans were terrible.”

An overseas visitor called it “a stadium from another century, feels like a museum”, and meant it as a criticism. Anyone who has been in the PAT on a big night will take it as a compliment.

9. Tinsulanonda Stadium (Songkhla, T2; Pattani, T1, for now) — 4.5 (1,163)

The only ground in the survey hosting football in both divisions this autumn. Its one-star reviews include “Excellent!”, “Excellent service.” and, best of all, “I don’t like the name.”

10. Chiang Rai Stadium (Chiangrai United, T1) — 4.5 (1,144)

This listing has “Move your pin nowwwww!”, which suggests at least one fan has spent a match day at the wrong end of a Google Maps pin. It also has “The stadium is beautiful, like a champion’s ground”, with one star. The shortest review of the lot, also one star, reads: “Did not win an award.”

11. Thunderdome (Muangthong United, T2) — 4.5 (596)

One review, posted nine months ago in the season that ended in relegation, says only: “The team is very weak.” It is short, but it is fair. The Thunderdome also hosts concerts, and one gig-goer noted with some delight that “Bottled water isn’t allowed in the stadium, but beer cans are! 55555555”. Another called it a “muggy little place”.

12. Insee Chantarasatit Stadium (Kasetsart, T2) — 4.5 (495)

13. Thalay Luang Stadium (Sukhothai, T1) — 4.5 (399) — “Not good because we loose the game.” One star. Sukhothai cannot be held responsible for the result.

14. Uthai Thani Province Stadium (Uthai Thani, T1) — 4.5 (316)

15. Buriram City Stadium (Rasisalai United, T1, temporary) — 4.5 (234) — Buriram province now has two top-flight grounds, and both are in the top half. Rasisalai are also due to play two home games at Sri Nakhon Lamduan before returning home.

16. Huayma Stadium (Phrae United, T2) — 4.5 (87)

17. Sisaket Province Stadium, Koh Klang Nam (Rasisalai United, T1) — 4.5 (72) — Not in use at the moment: closed for King’s Cup upgrades until 17 November. Koh Klang Nam means “island in the middle of the water”. So it seems fitting that one three-star reviewer found the inside “beautiful and meets high standards, but the outside has been flooded for several days”.

18. Lamphun Warrior Stadium (Lamphun Warrior, T1) — 4.5 (64) — The ground is surrounded by farmland. One visitor summed it up: “The playing on the field was awful but yeah.”

19. Nakhon Pathom Municipality Sports School Stadium (Nakhon Pathom United, T2) — 4.5 (40)

The 4.4s

20. Ayutthaya Province Stadium (Ayutthaya United, T1) — 4.4 (1,881)

This ground has more reviews than any other in the survey apart from Chang Arena, and very few of them are about football. It is a provincial sports complex, and reviewers treat it that way. One gives it one star because “I had to wait a very long time to get vaccinated.” Another gives it one star for “Excellent service, fast, and very well-organized.” But our favourite review in the whole exercise is also here, and it is one star: “I don’t hate it.”

21. 80th Birthday Stadium (Nakhon Ratchasima, T2) — 4.4 (1,527)

This is the only review in the survey to bring up horror films: “weeds growing like you see in Zombie movies”. Things improve slightly further down. “Delicious food..full flavor..kitchen matters..finish in one place..convenient and safe..” That is one star, and none of it is about the stadium.

22. Khon Kaen Province Stadium (Khon Kaen United, T2) — 4.4 (1,128) — There are two very good one-star reviews here: “It’s the best stadium” and “I’ve never used their services before.”

23. Kanchanaburi Province Stadium (Kanchanaburi Power, T2) — 4.4 (518) — One reviewer thinks the ground needs renovating and adds: “If you need a project manager, I’d be happy to assist.” Kanchanaburi, the offer is on the table.

24. NT Stadium (Police Tero, T2) — 4.4 (265) — “Yes, it was fun. The score was 6-1.” Three stars. We would like to know what a 7-1 gets.

25. Nong Prue Stadium (Pattaya United, T2) — 4.4 (259) — The only stadium in the survey praised for its sausages: “Best german bratwurst in city. Good beer. Sausage, beer, football always good.” Another reviewer gave two stars because the steaks ran out 30 minutes before kick-off.

26. Pitchaya Stadium (Nong Bua Pitchaya, T2) — 4.4 (111) — One visitor from eight years ago said that, by comparison, Udon Thani’s stadium was “a Taj Mahal”.

The bottom eight

27. Rayong Province Stadium (Rayong, T1) — 4.3 (1,513)

Rayong is the second-lowest-ranked Thai League 1 stadium in use this season, and this is where the survey tips into something close to poetry. One-star reviews at Rayong include:

• “There is ample parking.”
• “There are so many toys!”
• “Good morning!”
• “Very soft”
• “tired”

A two-star review simply says “I didn’t go.” That is a fair summary of how the survey was going by then.

28. Rainbow Stadium (Pattani, T1) — 4.3 (300) — Not in use at the moment: under renovation, with Pattani playing at Tinsulanonda instead. Only one review here has anything written in it. It has one star and says, in full, “Sophasduwiset”. We have no idea either.

29. Khao Plong Stadium (Chainat Hornbill, T2) — 4.3 (285)

30. Satun Province Stadium (Satun, T2) — 4.3 (266) — The only review in the survey to mention kites. On a hot evening, one visitor watched children flying them and said they looked like tadpoles.

31. Uttaradit Province Stadium (Uttaradit, T2) — 4.3 (252)

32. Sri Nakhon Lamduan Stadium (Sisaket United, T1) — 4.3 (190) — This is the lowest-ranked ground in Thai League 1. The one-star reviews include, in full, “Clean.” Meanwhile, a three-star review calls it “superb”.

33. Maha Sarakham Province Stadium (Mahasarakham SBT, T2) — 4.3 (91) — Most of the complaints here are about the floodlights not being switched on for evening runners. That makes sense of the most haunting three-star review of the survey: “The sun has set. It’s over.”

And last…

34. Chanthaburi Province Stadium (Chanthaburi, T2) — 4.2 (419)

Every league needs a bottom club, and Chanthaburi is ours. The complaints are the usual ones: toilets, drainage, and the kind of neglect provincial grounds suffer between events. But the review that best captures the whole exercise is here, and it is one star:

“The best standard football field in Chanthaburi. Worth playing at.”

Another reviewer gave one star and wrote: “Okay.”

So what did we learn?

Less than we’d hoped, but more than we deserved. Some findings:

• Thai grounds are rated more kindly than English ones. The spread here runs from 4.2 to 5.0. No Thai League ground falls as low as the Kassam’s 4.0. We think this says more about Thai reviewers than Thai stadiums.
• The top flight just about wins. Taking the grounds the clubs are actually playing at this season, the average Thai League 1 club plays at a ground rated 4.51. The average Thai League 2 club plays at one rated 4.44. But the best and worst grounds in the survey are both Thai League 2 venues.
• Size isn’t everything. Tomlin found that the big clubs dominate in England. In Thailand the champions come third, beaten by a university ground in the hills and the Chonburi Daikin Stadium, which doubles as Chonburi’s favourite park.
• Toilets decide everything. Toilets are the most common complaint at almost every ground on the list. Somebody should tell the FA of Thailand.
• One star doesn’t always mean one star. A surprising number of the most glowing reviews in Thai football come with the lowest possible rating. Anyone who has ever tapped the wrong star on a phone knows how this happens.

Thai League 1 is back on 9 October. By then we’ll have rested, and we’ll have plenty of opinions on the Thai League’s toilets.

Ratings and review counts taken from each stadium's main Google Maps listing on 29 September 2026. Reviews quoted as Google displays them, including its automatic translations from Thai. Inspired by the Guardian's Knowledge column of 23 September 2026.