The Cicero Pompeu Stadium in Toledo, also known as Morumbi Stadium, is a football stadium located in the city of São Paulo, a state of the same name in Brazil. The stadium was inaugurated in 1960 and has a capacity for 72,039 people, being the official headquarters of the city team, the São Paulo Futebol Clube. Morumbi is the 3rd largest stadium in Brazil, second only to the Maracanã Stadium and the Mané Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia. He has received more than 30 matches from the Brazilian soccer team.
History.
In its first years of existence, the São Paulo Futebol Clube used the Estadio de la Floresta, which is why the club that existed between January 1930 and May 1935 was known as São Paulo da Floresta.
When the club was refounded in December 1935, it did not have its own field, a situation in which it remained until 1938, when its union with the Students took São Paulo to the Mooca stadium. In 1940 he went on to use the Pacaembu stadium.
In 1944, São Paulo bought the Canindé stadium, which became its field. But the Canindé was very small for the team's call and then the ideas and projects for the construction of a monumental stadium emerged.
The dream of building a great stadium began to come true. The initial idea was to build it in the current area where Ibirapuera Park is located, at the time an elongated region, but Jânio Quadros prevented the club from leaving the prefecture. The place chosen was an area in the Leonor Garden, region of Morumbi, practically uninhabited, which was in the process of urbanization.
In December 1951, the area was acquired by São Paulo.
In 1952, the club president, Cícero Pompeu de Toledo, proposed Laudo Natel, director of Bradesco, to manage the club administratively.
On August 15, 1952, Monsignor Bastos blessed the lands and the Morumbi Pro-Construction campaign was launched. A commission constituted by President Cícero Pompeu de Toledo and by the following names was elected: Piragibe Nogueira (vice president); Luís Cássio dos Santos (secretary); Amador Aguiar (treasurer); Altino de Castro Lima, Carlos Alberto Gomes Cardim, Luís Campos Aranha, Manuel Raimundo Paes de Almeida, Osvaldo Artur Bratke, Roberto Gomes Pedrosa, Roberto Barros Lima, Marcos Gasparian, Paulo Machado de Carvalho and Pedro França Filho Pinto.
Those would be the men who would realize the dream of building the largest particular stadium in the world. It began then, a new phase in the life of São Paulo.
Morumbi Stadium. São Paulo Party 5-0 Youth; 2006/10/14.
Part of the money from the sale of the Canindé (sold to Portuguesa de Deportes in 1956) was invested in construction material. The entire budget of the club was also invested in the construction of the stadium, leaving the team in the background. The works for the construction of the new stadium began in 1953.
The great tricolor dream was being built. The stadium project was created by Vilanova Artigas, one of the main representatives of the São Paulo school of modern architecture.
Some numbers of the greatness of the Morumbi are impressive: for the development of the project, 370 sheets of paper were needed; it took five months to do the excavations, with the movement of 340 cubic kilometers of land; the 280,000 bags of cement used, placed in a row, cover the distance from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro; 50 thousand tons of iron, which they would give to circle the Earth twice and a half.
At one point, the purchase of the stadium was proposed by the prefecture, which was rejected. But Laudo Natel, supported by the entire board, continued the battle, after the death of Cícero Pompeu de Toledo. Such a proposal, together with the fact that Natel had assumed the government of the State in 1966, would generate the idea, widely spread among rivals, that the Morumbi Stadium had been built with public money.
The effort to build the largest private stadium in the world deserved a grand opening party.