Brazil said the stadiums for the 2014 World Cup would be finished, but pictures show Manaus’s Amazonia Arena incomplete and its field in very poor condition. England plays Italy at the arena on Saturday.
The arena cost over $290 million to build. From The Telegraph:
The playing surface is noticeably dry and sandy and particularly bare around one of the goals, with large yellowing areas of turf.
The rest of the stadium is not completely finished, with naked power cables dangling from the walls of the changing rooms and workers still applying a final coat of asphalt outside the ground. Several security doors are also waiting to be fitted at the stadium where a construction worker died last year after falling from the roof.
The stadium holds 46,000 people and was the first stadium that started construction after Brazil won the 2014 bid. But caretakers overused fertilizer on the pitch and it is hard enough to maintain a decent field in a city so deep in the rainforest.
England’s team travels to Manaus on Thursday. The team’s coach already worried about the players’ health in the hot and humid rainforest.
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