Estadio de la Ciudad de los Deportes

Lore & Background

In summer 2016, Mexico City authorities announced plans to demolish the stadium would begin at the end of the 2017–2018 Liga MX season. However, in July 2018, the demolition project was put on hold. On 1 November 2024, local authorities closed the stadium indefinitely due to a lack of required safety certifications and issues with the stadium's infrastructure. The closure caused schedule disruptions for Club América, Atlante, and Cruz Azul. The stadium reopened on 7 November with new regulations. Atlante announced they would move to Estadio Agustín "Coruco" Díaz in Zacatepec, Morelos. On 8 January 2025 Cruz Azul announced its relocation to the Estadio Olímpico Universitario.

In Their Own Story

It is a Tuesday in November, the kind of Mexico City night where the air still holds the day's heat and the floodlights turn the grass to wet green. You arrive an hour early, threading through the Santa Úrsula streets where the blue-and-white banners are already strung between lampposts. Inside, the corridor smells of concrete dust and cheap coffee. You find your seat in the south stand, third row, and the person beside you is already drumming a rhythm on his knee with a folded program.

The first flare goes up before the teams even line up. The smoke is thick, blue-white, and it rolls across the top of the stand like a slow tide. The chanting starts low, a single voice finding the melody, then a dozen, then the whole tier locking in. The concrete under your feet starts to hum. A player jogs through the tunnel and the sound swells into something physical, something that presses against your sternum. The match will be ugly, physical, a war of attrition in the middle third. But nobody here came for elegance. They came for the grind, the blue, the noise that makes the whole complex shake. And when the final whistle blows and the score is 1-0, the stand does not cheer. It roars, holds, and then roars again, because the machine turned, and the machine always turns.

Reader's Guide

The stadium holds 34,253 people, including 92 boxes. Following the arrival of Cruz Azul, there have been many renovations including two professional football locker rooms, two locker rooms for referees, a press conference room with seating capacity for 50 people, and a closed-circuit video system including seventy cameras. A peculiarity of this stadium is that it is built as a pit with the playing field below street level. Just beside the stadium is the Plaza México, the world's largest bullring.

Did You Know?

• The Tazón México has been played at the stadium.
• Both times Mexico hosted the World Cup, Estadio Azul did not host matches mainly due to the age of the structure, bad parking facilities, and complex traffic patterns.
• The stadium reopened on 7 November 2024 with new regulations such as an increase in security personnel, promotion of public transport, and the prohibition of holding two events on the same day.