Antonio Vespucio Liberti Stadium

Estadio "Monumental" Antonio Vespucio Liberti (Spanish pronunciation: [esˈtaðjo monumenˈtal anˈtonjo βesˈpusjo liˈβeɾti]), also referred to as River Plate Stadium, Monumental de Nunez, or simply El Monumental, is a stadium in the Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina (although popular belief wrongly states that the stadium is in the Nunez district), home of the football club River Plate.

It was opened on 26 May 1938 and named after former club president Antonio Vespucio Liberti. It is the largest stadium in Argentina with a capacity of 70,074 and is also home of the Argentina national football team. It was the main venue in the 1951 Pan American Games. It hosted the 1978 FIFA World Cup Final between Argentina and the Netherlands. Additionally, it hosted four finals of the Copa America, most recently in 2011.

History

The Club Atletico River Plate was founded in 1901 and by 1934, it had won two championships. At the time, the club was nicknamed "Los Millonarios" (The Millionaires in Spanish) because of the purchase of forward Carlos Peucelle for whom River had paid a huge amount of money. On October 31, 1934, River Plate purchased the land where the club was to build the new stadium in the neighborhood of Belgrano.

El Monumental was built on land reclaimed from the marshy coast of Rio de la Plata. On May 25, 1935, the cornerstone was laid on the Centennial (now Figueroa Alcorta) and Rio de la Plata (Udaondo) Avenues. On December 1 of that year, the Steering Committee presented the approved project in detail to its members at an assembly. They obtained a loan of $2,500,000 from the government and on September 27, 1936, construction began under the direction of architects Jose Aslan and Hector Ezcurra.

The initial cost of work reached the figure of $4,479,545.80, but was reduced to about 3 million dollars when the committee decided to halt the construction of the north end of the stadium due to a lack of adequate funds.

The foundation of the stadium was to be six or

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