Estadio Fonte Nova

The Estadio Fonte Nova, also known as Estadio Octavio Mangabeira, was a football stadium inaugurated on January 28, 1951 in Salvador, Bahia, with a maximum capacity of 66,080 people. The stadium was owned by the Bahia government, and was the home stadium of Esporte Clube Bahia and Esporte Clube Vitoria. Its formal name honors Octavio Cavalcanti Mangabeira, a civil engineer, journalist, and former Bahia state governor from 1947 to 1954.

After part of the upper terraces collapsed in 2007, killing 7 people and injuring several others, the government of Bahia announced the demolition of Fonte Nova and the construction of a new stadium, the Arena Fonte Nova, in the same place.

The stadium was nicknamed Fonte Nova because it was located at Ladeira das Fontes das Pedras.

History

The stadium construction ended in 1951. On March 4, 1971, the stadium was reinaugurated, after a great reformation involving the addition of a second tier, which expanded the maximum stadium capacity from 35,000 to 110,000. In the reinauguration day, two matches were played: Bahia against Flamengo, and Vitoria against Gremio. On that day happened a big tumult, where two people died.

The inaugural match was played on January 28, 1951, when Guarany and Botafogo, both local Bahia state teams, drew 2-1. The first goal of the stadium was scored by Guarany's Nelson.

The stadium's attendance record currently stands at 110,438, set on February 12, 1989 when Bahia beat Fluminense 2-1.

On November 25, 2007, when the Brazilian Championship Third Division match between Bahia and Vila Nova was nearly over with more than 60,000 supporters in attendance, a section of the stadium's highest terraces collapsed when Bahia's supporters were celebrating the club's promotion to the Brazilian Championship Second Division, killing seven people and injuring forty others.

This page also has a version in other languages :  Фонте-Нова Стадион (russian)