World Cup Brazil 2014

Beira-Rio is a stadium located in Porto Alegre, capital city of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost in Brazil.

It was well known that Porto Alegre would be chosen as one of the host cities of the World Cup 2014. However, it was also known that there would be a dispute between the two main teams of the State, Internacional and Grêmio, to decide whose stadium would stage the matches in the city (Porto Alegre is the only city in the world to have two teams World Champions of Football).

Grêmio has also a large and modern stadium, the Olímpico Monumental; however, following technical criteria, FIFA and CBF decided that Beira-Rio would be the stadium in Porto Alegre.

Beira-Rio means “by the river”. The stadium is also known as Gigante da Beira-Rio, which means “the Giant by the river”. The photo below (source) shows why: the stadium is big, and was built by the Guaíba, the river which washes Porto Alegre.

The more recent photo below shows the Beira-Rio and, besides it, the Gigantinho (Little Giant), the indoor arena which also belongs to Internacional.

The official name of Beira-Rio is Stadium José Pinheiro Borda. Mr. Borda was a Portuguese citizen who headed the building of the Stadium, between 1959 and 1969. Most of the bricks used in the building were donated by supporters of Internacional.

Interesting to notice that Internacional have today over 100,000 paying members, and Grêmio  has a similar number. In no other place in Brazil, do teams have such a high number of paying members (even popular teams like Flamengo or Sao Paulo have millions of supporters, but very few pay a monthly fee).

Beira-Rio was opened on April 6th 1969, with a match between Internacional and Benfica, from Portugal; inter won by 2×1. Record attendance was in 1972, in a match between Brazil and Rio Grande do Sul, with 106,554 attendants. Today, the capacity is for 56,000 attendants.

Beira-Rio is probably the Brazilian stadium closer to fully comply with the FIFA demands to host a World Cup match. All chairs have been recently replaced, the TV and telecommunication areas have been refurbished, the pitch has the best grass in Brazil, the access areas provide for easy arrival and clearance of visitors.

However, the stadium will gain some more improvements until 2014. The image below shows an artistic view of the New Beira-Rio, designed by Hype Architects.

New Beira-Rio will gain a shopping center and a hotel. The roof will be extended. More chairs will be added to the lower ring, bringing total capacity of Beira-Rio to 65,000 people.

With this capacity, Beira-Rio will compete shoulder to shoulder with Morumbi for the title of largest private stadium in Brazil (Beira-Rio, Morumbi and Arena da Baixada are the three only private stadia which will host matches of the World Cup 2014).

So, Beira-Rio is a strong candidate to host important matches of the World Cup, such as the opening match or one of the semi-final matches (the final will probably be in Maracanã).

Read also this blog about Beira Rio 2014.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 4:40 pm and is filed under cities, stadium.