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According to the Mozambican Football Federation, conditions only allow for the rehabilitation of the football field. [Photo: DW]
The construction of a football stadium in the city of Maxixe, Inhambane, was announced by the Mozambican Football Federation five years ago. Funding was initiated by FIFA, but the stadium remains a mirage to this day.
Five years have gone by since the Mozambican Football Federation announced the construction of a municipal stadium in the city of Maxixe, in Inhambane, southern Mozambique.
In 2018, the provincial government approved the FIFA-financed project (International Football Federation), and in 2019, the contract for the construction of the stadium was signed in the amount of approximately US$4.5 million. The document was signed by Alberto Simango Júnior, former president of the Mozambican Football Federation, and Dajin Chen, general director of the Chinese company Julen Construções.
But last week, the current president of the Mozambican Football Federation, Faizal Sidat, announced that the construction of the municipal stadium was no longer possible, because he believed that it would not be sustainable.
New project
The FIFA funds will now be used to rehabilitate the old colonial Fernando Gomes sports ground in Maxixe, laying synthetic turf and increasing the capacity of the stands.
“This project is a replacement for the previous one that was supposed to be a stadium. What we want is massification. From April we start with the works, and by September I think we will have the field. We are still working on the funds, and FIFA itself is going to launch the contest, since we want as much transparency as possible,” Sidat explains.
However, Maxixe’s mayor, Fernando Bambo, says that the municipality was ready for a new stadium and had already paid compensation to the families who lived where the stadium was to be built.
“We had already compensated [the families] for the improvements and given the land use rights for that space. It was to be a field with international dimensions and with capacity about 2,000 spectators, and would have been a great victory for us,” he says.
Citizens surprised
Maxixe resident Egídio Agostinho says that not building the municipal stadium surprised many citizens. “The bankruptcy of the project for me is not welcome, because building a field there in Mangapana would be giving space for the development of infrastructure,” hr thinks.
But for Tofane Abibo, the construction of a municipal stadium in the city of Maxixe would have been a waste of money.
“The field that was going to be built in Mangapana would be a stadium of national dimensions, and this would be a waste of money for me, because here we have no team in national or in international games,” he explains.
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