The Ricoh Arena, the home of Coventry City Football Club has been selected as the new Midlands venue to host Olympic Football matches in 2012.   This follows a selection procedure by the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) and means that all venues are now in place for the London Games.

The venue will be temporarily re-named the City of Coventry Stadium for the London 2012 Olympic Games and all other branding will be removed at Games time. The Stadium replaces Villa Park which was ruled out because of planned building development work.

Seb Coe, LOCOG Chair, said: ‘The City of Coventry Stadium is a great venue, and will be an excellent host for Football matches for the London 2012 Olympic Games. It is ideally located in the centre of England and the city already has strong links with London 2012. I congratulate Coventry and extend my thanks to all the Midlands clubs who applied to be a venue. All were a very good standard, and this shows the excellent standards of football stadia in this country.’

Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, said: ‘Sitting at the heart of the Midlands, the City of Coventry Stadium is ideally located for thousands of people to come and watch the London 2012 football competition and be inspired to get involved in sport.’

Daniel Gidney, Chief Executive of the Ricoh Arena, said: ‘We are looking forward enormously to staging Olympic football in Coventry.  This is a great honour and we are proud to be involved with the Games.  We have worked hard over the last few months to prepare our bid and I would like to thank all our partners and organisations involved for their support.’