Estadio Azteca

July 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under 100000 +, Mexico, North America

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Estadio Azteca is a stadium in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the official home stadium of the Mexico national football team and the Mexican team Club América.

Estadio Azteca was the primary venue for association football at the 1968 Summer Olympics and is the only stadium ever to host two FIFA World Cup final matches, in 1970 and 1986. It also hosted the 1986 quarter-final between Argentina and England in which Diego Maradona scored both the “Hand of God goal” and the “Goal of the Century”. The stadium also hosted the “Game of the Century”, when Italy defeated Germany with scores of 4-3 in extra time. With a capacity of 105,000 (original capacity of 114,600), it is the largest stadium in Mexico and fifth largest in the world.

Events

Estadio Azteca has hosted a variety of international sporting competitions, including:

1968 Summer Olympics
1970 FIFA World Cup
1975 Pan American Games
1983 FIFA World Youth Championship
1986 FIFA World Cup
1999 FIFA Confederations Cup
On October 2, 2005, the first international regular-season game in the history of the NFL was played in the stadium between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals. The game was a 31–14 victory for the Cardinals and holds the record of the largest crowd to attend a regular season NFL game with 103,467 persons.
On 20 February 1993 Julio Cesar Chavez fought Greg Haugen in front of 132,247 spectators.

Names

The name “Azteca” is a tribute to the Aztec heritage of Mexico City. The stadium has never been the Olympic Stadium. This role in 1968 was for Estadio Olímpico Universitario. The stadium is now owned by Mexican TV consortium Televisa. In order to avoid people associating the stadium’s name with that of its rival TV Azteca, Televisa officially changed the stadium’s name to Guillermo Cañedo, a top executive, long-time football advocate at Televisa and prominent member of the executive committee of FIFA. The change took place in 1997, following Cañedo’s death on January 20, 1997. However the change did not go well with the general population, who generally refused to refer to the stadium by its formally new name. Following a schism where two of Cañedo’s sons, who worked at Televisa, switched camps and went to TV Azteca, Televisa quietly returned the stadium’s name to its original version. Some people did not even notice, as they usually referred to the stadium as “Azteca” during the name change.

The stadium has been given the nickname of “Coloso de Santa Ursula” which, in English, means “Colossus of Saint Ursula”, due to its large structure. Santa Ursula refers to the part of town where the stadium resides in Mexico City.