Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica (2011)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (March 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 5,025 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica (2011)]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|es|Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica (2011)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The National Stadium of Costa Rica (Spanish: Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica) is a multi-purpose stadium in La Sabana Metropolitan Park, San José, Costa Rica. It was the first modern sporting and events arena to be built in Central America.^[3] The stadium was completed in early 2011 and officially opened its doors to the public on March 26 of that year, with a capacity of 35,175 seats.^[2][3] The stadium replaced the original National Stadium (built 100 years ago), and is the home stadium of the Costa Rican national football team.^[4]

It has one high-definition, 160-square-metre (1,700 sq ft) video screen located in the southern section of the stadium, along with a smaller, monochromatic screen. A second monochromatic screen (of the same dimensions) is in the northern section.^[5]

The stadium hosted matches during the 2014 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, including the opening game, the third place match and the Final, as well as matches during the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, including the opening game and the Final.

The Estadio Nacional hosted the kickoff show of Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour, due to the green credentials of the country.

Funding and Construction

The initial cost was $88 million, it grew to $100 million.^[6]

The Chinese government financed the construction, furnishing, and general costs of the stadium on their own.

The president of Costa Rica, Óscar Arias and the leader of People's Republic of China Hu Jintao, agreed to build the stadium during Arias' first visit to China in October 2007.^[9] The construction began on March 12, 2009, and it finished in 2011.

The Chinese company

The grand inauguration ceremony occurred on March 26, 2011. National and international sports activities and entertainment went on through April 10. An official stadium inauguration website was created,^[10] which informed the population of all inaugurating events.

The main inaugurating event was a friendly association football match between Costa Rica and China, which ended 2–2, with Álvaro Saborío scoring the first goal ever in the stadium.

During 2011, the new stadium was subject of a heavy investment made by the Costa Rican Football Federation to propel Costa Rican football into the world scene. To do this, the federation organized friendly matches against previous FIFA World Cup winners Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, with the latter being the then most recent winners of the tournament.^[11]

Football tournaments

2013 Copa Centroamericana

The Estadio Nacional hosted all 14 matches of the 2013 Copa Centroamericana.

Date	Team #1	Result	Team #2	Round	Attendance
18 January 2013	Guatemala	1–1	Nicaragua	Group A (opening match)	200
	Honduras	1–1	El Salvador	Group B	2,500
	Costa Rica	1–0	Belize	Group A	5,484
20 January 2013	Belize	0–0	Guatemala	Group A	250
	El Salvador	0–0	Panama	Group B
	Costa Rica	2–0	Nicaragua	Group A	5,980
22 January 2013	Nicaragua	1–2	Belize	Group A	750
	Panama	1–1	Honduras	Group B	3,450
	Costa Rica	1–1	Guatemala	Group A	6,760
25 January 2013	Guatemala	1–3	Panama	5th Place Match	279
	Honduras	1–0	Belize	Semifinals	1,664
	Costa Rica	1–0	El Salvador		4,993
27 January 2013	El Salvador	1–0	Belize	Third place match	1,997
	Costa Rica	1–0	Honduras	Final	14,146

2014 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup

El Nacional hosted nine games of the 2014 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup. It hosted four Group A matches; including the opener, a Group C and Group D game, two quarterfinal matches, the 3rd place play-off and the final. The games were:

Date	Team #1	Result	Team #2	Round	Attendance
15 March 2014	Italy	2–0	Zambia	Group A (opening match)	34,453
	Costa Rica	0–3	Venezuela	Group A
18 March 2014	Venezuela	4–0	Zambia		25,624
	Costa Rica	0–1	Italy
23 March 2014	Japan	3–0	New Zealand	Group C	5,100
	Nigeria	3–0	Mexico	Group D
27 March 2014	Venezuela	3–2	Canada	Quarter-finals	1,812
	Ghana	2–2 (4–3 p)	Italy
4 April 2014	Venezuela	4–4 (2–0 p)	Italy	Third place match	29,814
	Japan	2–0	Spain	Final

2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup

Estadio Nacional hosted eighteen games of the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup. It hosted four Group A matches, two Group B games, four Group C games, and two Group D games, two quarterfinal matches, two semifinal matches, the 3rd place play-off and the final. The games were:

Date	Team #1	Result	Team #2	Round	Attendance
10 August 2022	Spain	0–0	Brazil	Group A	9,819
	Costa Rica	1–3	Australia		22,506
11 August 2022	France	0–1	Nigeria	Group C	723
	Canada	0–2	South Korea		839
13 August 2022	Mexico	1–1	Colombia	Group B	9,336
	Costa Rica	0–5	Spain	Group A	22,446
14 August 2022	United States	0–3	Netherlands	Group D	2,652
	France	3–1	Canada	Group C	2,652
16 August 2022	Colombia	2–2	New Zealand	Group B	3,378
	Brazil	5–0	Costa Rica	Group A	11,923
17 August 2022	Netherlands	4–1	Ghana	Group D	814
	South Korea	0–1	France	Group C	979
20 August 2022	Spain	1–0	Mexico	Quarter-finals	4,914
	Colombia	0–1	Brazil		7,874
25 August 2022	Spain	2–1	Netherlands	Semi-finals	4,054
	Brazil	1–2	Japan		6,571
28 August 2022	Netherlands	1–4	Brazil	Third place match	15,672
	Spain	3–1	Japan	Final	29,891

Concerts

Fire incident

During the opening ceremony of the 2013 Central American Games, a fire broke out in the stadium because of a stray firework which hit the western part of the stadium roof.^[12] The fire damaged some lighting equipments but the stadium was still used for the Games.^[13]

Panorama view

Panorama view of the Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica. March, 2022.

References

External links

• Official website