Sunday, February 28, 2016

2016 Rio Summer Olympics Venues outside Rio de Janeiro: Sao Paulo's Arena Corinthians

Overview on Brazil’s Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil with a population of over 10 million people. This high population also makes it the world’s 12th most populous city; you can imagine how big it is. This high population has also made it the richest Brazilian city and this is evident with its beautiful architectural designs as well as high end shopping malls, parks and hotels.

Unlike other Brazilian recent cities, Sao Paulo is one of the oldest have been established in the 15th century by Portuguese catholic missionaries.

This will be a great opportunity to sample Sao Paulo's best kept secrets, enjoy the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics Football Matches in style in this historical and great Brazilian city.

A picture of where Sao Paulo started; Pátio do Colégio in São Paulo.

This picture is from Wikipedia under Creative Common License

Today, it’s a modern city with vibrant city life, clubs and casinos, despite have stated as a missionary center with a Jesuit college of 12 Portuguese priests. These priests had a desire to convert Indians to Christians.

Some of the priests were José de Anchieta and his colleague Manuel da Nóbrega, who first established Portuguese settlement by building a village on top of a hill located between the rivers Anhangabaú, which passes through this city’s older part. Anhangabaú has been canalized and on its shore it offers spectacular picnic, meetings location as well as carnival ground and other entertainment for the city residents and visitors alike. I believe this is something the founding missionary’s fathers from the Jesuit order could not have approved.

The other river that bordered the old settlement is Tamanduateí River, which is still in the City’s vicinity with its mouth feeding to the Atlantic Ocean.

A picture of where Sao Paulo in modern days

This picture is from Wikipedia under Creative Common License

The missionary village was known as São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga which included a missionary college by the name of Colégio de São Paulo de Piratiningaon which opened its doors on the 25th of January 1554.

Such was the humble beginning of this great Brazilian city of St Paul, translated into Portuguese to Sao Paulo, the name that we know if. Piratininga, where the first city settlement was built is today’s one of the Sao Paulo state’s municipal with a population of about 10,000 people. Looking at Sao Paulo today you can think the above mentioned first structures were made of stones but no, the missionaries used the Indian labor and design, making these ancient structures modest as they were made of earth unlike today’s high end skyscrapers that dotes this Sao Paulo.

The name of the city; Sao Paulo was due to the Colégio de São Paulo de Piratiningaon commemoration of the conversion of St Paul to Christianity and change of his name from Saul the anti-Christ to Paul as we all known him today.

The great view of Sao Paulo

This picture is from Wikipedia under Creative Common License

It is in this great City that men and women will battle it out in the 2016 Summer Olympics football sport. The venue for these exciting matches will be Sao Paulo’s Arena Corinthians.

Arena Corinthians

This is yet another 2016 Summer Olympics 5 venues that are not part of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics clusters. These other 4 venues that not in Rio are Manaus’ Arena da Amazônia, Belo Horinzante’s Mineirao Stadium, Brasilia’s Mané Garrincha and Salvador’s Itaipava Arena Fonte.

Arena Corinthians is fairly a new stadium had been built to accommodate matches for the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil. Its construction started on the 30th of May and took almost three years to complete and opened its doors on April of 2014, just some few months before the World Cup began. It is a great stadium that can host up to 50,000 people or more as it held 63,267 on 9th of July during the match between Argentina and Netherlands.

The Arena Corinthians

This picture is from Wikipedia under Creative Common License

Unlike many other stadiums in Brazil and the world at large, Arena Corinthians does not have pure grass surface but a mixture of ryegrass and artificial fiber. Due to lack of land and funds to purchase a new site, the two initial stadiums had to be demolished; these two are Pacaembu Stadium and Alfredo Schürig Stadium. However despite the high cost of its construction as it costed Brazil taxpayers over US$ 430 million to build plus the demolition of two stadiums, the Arena Corinthians did not disappoint as it resulted to an iconic magnificent rectangular shaped stadium that defied the old and common circular shape of most football stadiums in the world.

This unique design of the stadium was the work of Aníbal Coutinho; a Brazilian architect who designed it with assistance of others designers and engineers to create a stunning structure that will host football matches for the first Rio Summer Olympics.

Arena Corinthians will host four football matches for the 2016 Summer Olympics men football sport and five Group F matches and the Bronze match for the 2016 Summer Olympics women football sport.

Below is a schedule of all the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics matches that are taking place at the Sao Paulo’s Arena Corinthians

2016 SUMMNER OLYMPICS FOOTBALL MATCHES TO BE HELD AT THE ARENA CORINTHIANS IN SAO PAULO

Date

Group

Gender

Time

City

Venue

Team 1

Team 2

3rd August

Group F Matches

Women

3.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Australia

Canada

3rd August

Group F Matches

Women

6.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Germany

Zimbabwe

6th August

Group F Matches

Women

3.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Canada

Zimbabwe

6th August

Group F Matches

Women

6.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Australia

Germany

12th August

Group F Winner/Group G Runners-Up

Women

7.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

 

 

13th August

Loser of S1/Loser of S2

Women

1.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

 

 

10th August

Group B Matches

Men

7.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Colombia

Nigeria

10th August

Group A Matches

Men

10.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

Iraq

South Africa

13th August

Group A Winner/Group B Runners-Up

Men

10.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

 

 

17th August

Winner of QF 3/QF 4

Men

3.00 PM

São Paulo

Arena Corinthians

 

 

 

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