Review : LEGO 10284 FC Barcelona Camp Nou

Today we are quickly interested in the LEGO set 10284 FC Barcelona Camp Nou, a big box of 5509 pieces which comes to join the set 10272 Old Trafford - Manchester United (3898 pieces - 269.99 €) within the "collection" of stadiums in LEGO version.

For those who are not football fans to the point of knowing all the major stadiums, it is a question here of assembling the Camp Nou, home stadium of the FC Barcelona team and the largest enclosure in Europe with a capacity of just over 99.000 spectators.

Collector's effect requires, this new stadium in LEGO version takes up some of the recipes of the other model already available with its good ideas and its faults. We thus find the pad-printed lawn whose parts are still not perfectly aligned even if we note that progress has been made, the presentation base covered with Tiles matt with their large injection point placed in the center and the inevitable huge sheet of stickers with letters that you will have to try to align correctly so as not to disfigure the model.

The comparison with Old Trafford stops there, here it is much more messy when it comes to assembling the stands, the fault of the ovoid shape of the enclosure which requires to follow the curves and break down these stands. into multiple subsets. From a distance, the LEGO version of Camp Nou remains rather convincing and we find all the most significant attributes of the stadium, but closer, we have to come to terms with very rough alignments of certain parts and take into account the relative fragility of construction.

The stadium is broken down into five parts which come together via a few Technic pins. The four quarters to be placed around the lawn are not fixed to each other or to the ground, the pins only serve to position them correctly once the exhibition location has been chosen. It's a good idea, this solution will facilitate the movement of the model, but you will have to be careful to group all the modules together once the set has been set up on your shelves.

No Technic pieces in the base of the stadium which is here composed of classic bricks and plates with filling in the colors of Catalonia. The rigidity of the different parts of the base is not affected by this choice, the whole remains solid and each of the four stadium quarters can be easily grasped and moved.

The designer has chosen to reproduce the stands using brick stacks simply clipped onto the stadium structure and the alignment of these numerous modules is a bit laborious. The vast majority of these subsets only fit on a single clip and the stands shift a bit on their own at the slightest movement. You then have to reposition everything correctly once the exhibition location has been chosen and I must admit that the exercise quickly annoyed me. The same goes for the gray pieces on which we fix the white borders of the stands, they tend to come off very easily, especially when trying to reposition the stands correctly. Putting them back in place involves dismantling at least the sub-assembly of stands that covers them and handling quickly becomes annoying.

As with Old Trafford, the pieces that embody the stands are not all ridged and there are a few smooth pieces here and there which detract from the uniformity of the whole with not only a visible difference in surface but also a feeling of different hue. due to the shadow cast on the streaks which is logically not present on smooth parts. If we add the spaces that remain visible between the different rows of stands, the result is really less convincing than for Old Trafford.

For their part, the two roof portions are only fixed via a few tenons, they are then held by the gray flexible tubes which circulate on the upper edge of the stands and which must be allowed to protrude to maintain the side of the roof which simply rests. on some Tiles. In practice, it works, but I did not expect this somewhat lazy solution to maintain the two parts of the roof. In addition to this detail, the exterior finish of the stadium is generally very correct and the ridged bricks that make up the uprights of the structure really contribute to the fidelity of the model to the reference construction.

The other flaw of the product: the really ultra-repetitive side of the assembly that is spread over the two thick instruction booklets. With a few variations, we always build the same sub-assembly which clips onto the others and forms the enclosure. If you have already donated your person for the Colosseum of the set 10276 Colosseum, you can have a very precise idea of ​​what awaits you here. It's hard to blame the designer on this point, it's the subject that imposes this repetition. If you are looking for a product that will distract you with the variety of techniques used, this is probably not the one that should be your priority.

As I said above, it is also necessary to stick a very large handful of stickers on the stands to reproduce the inscriptions visible on the real stadium, including the club's motto. As for Old Trafford, the blue of the background of these stickers does not completely match that of the parts and the black lines of the stickers are in my opinion much too thick and really too dark to fit perfectly on the blue background. I suspect the graphic designer in charge of designing the stickers to have imagined that the stripes of the blue parts would produce a shadow effect and to have tried to reproduce this effect on the stickers, but it is again a bit too pronounced.

On arrival, this officially licensed product of the club is undoubtedly to be reserved for fans of LEGO who are also fans of football and especially of FC Barcelona, ​​especially at 330 € the model. As always, there will be quite a few collectors who will want to add a second stage on their shelves, just to impress their friends with this reproduction of a mythical stage, this product generally satisfactory and credible when viewed from a certain distance. is also made for them. The others would probably have appreciated being able to get a copy of the small promotional set. 40485 FC Barcelona Celebration without having to buy the stadium, but this is not planned by LEGO.

It will be without me, I was only vaguely interested in FC Barcelona because Lionel Messi played there, those days are now over and Camp Nou is not one of my priorities when it comes to LEGO sets.

Note: The set presented here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at September 14, 2021 next at 23pm. 

Update : The winner was drawn and was notified by email, his nickname is indicated below. Without a response from him to my request for contact details within 5 days, a new winner will be drawn.