It's not about the Santiago Bernabeu. Neither did the Old Trafford, Camp Nou, Anfield or the Amsterdam Arena. During 2021, the Polish website specializing in world stadiums, Stadium Database, established a vote on what were the best stages of last year and the results were striking.
It is that the Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades in Santiago del Estero was considered the second best on the planet during the elections that left El Sadar de Osasuna, of the first division of Spanish football, in first place, located in Pamplona.
The Santiagueño coliseum received 13,207 points against the 41,415 of the house of the cast of Navarra, a broad winner of the poll. Third place among the 23 nominees was Banco Guayaquil in Quito, Ecuador, where it plays the local Independiente del Valle (13,154 points).
“The public vote had some solid candidates this year, including 3 stadiums in Qatar, which will host the FIFA World Cup in just a few months. However, just like last year, when the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium in Malaysia finished first, we didn't expect such a colossal advantage between the winner and the next places on the podium,” they stressed from the organization.
“With such strong and numerous candidates from Turkey and the United States, the Spanish fans had to do their best to make their stadium triumph in our competition. That's how it happened, and the Navarra fans left no doubt,” he continued with the statement about the poll, which had almost 13,000 participants.
The survey is conducted every year, it takes into account different aspects of infrastructure and stadiums built or remodeled during the season are part of the stadiums. And the Madre de Ciudades was inaugurated on March 4, 2021 with the match between River Plate and Racing Club for the Argentine Super Cup.
The striking thing is that the most exotic and least thought out places were taken into account. For example, Cambodia's Morodok Techo National Stadium took sixth place, Cameroon's Stade Omnisport Paul Biya followed in ninth place and Turkey's Yeni Ordu Stadyumu placed eleventh. Meanwhile, Al-Madina Stadium in Iraq rose to 17th place, while Stade Olympique d'Oran in Algeria was installed in 18th place.
The last five winners were the Vodafone Arena in Istanbul (Turkey, 2016); General Pablo Rojas Stadium in Asunción (Paraguay, 2017); Volgograd Arena in Volvograd (Russia, 2018); Puskas Arena in Budapest (Hungary, 2019); and the bSultan Ibrahim Stadium in Iskandar Puteri (Malaysia, 2020).
THE RESULTS OF THE 23 BEST STADIUMS OF 2021
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