Estadio Nemesio Camacho – stadium description

Plans of building a new stadium for Bogota were first drawn in 1934 as the city was preparing for its 400^th anniversary celebrations and first ever Bolivarian Games.

It's the very beginning of its existence that saw both official and unofficial names introduced. Patronage of Nemesio Comacho was earned by the local tycoon when he donated land for the stadium, which stood in El Campín (or camping in English, due to the park existing here).

Construction works were interrupted by a flood, but delays reached only a week, little enough to open in August 1938. Initially its stands held only 10,000 people, but were expanded to 23,500 in 1948. Then, just three years later came complete redevelopment that brought capacity to 54,000. But none of those numbers could effectively cope with demand for top games, leading to overcrowding being present in each of these configurations.

Crowds of up to 60,000 people forced one more expansion in 1968. This was about the time when modernisation process began – in 1967 first floodlit game was played, in 1969 came the first scoreboard. Later on capacity started going down, especially between 1998-2001, when the ground was conversed into an all-seater, with some 47,000 seats. Last, but also significant decrease came in 2011, as FIFA's expectations upon U20 World Cup forced a drop to 36,343.

In its history it held numerous sporting events, with Juegos Bolivarianos and youth World Cup already mentioned. There were also Copa CONMEBOL, Copa America and Copa Libertadores final, among others. And, of course numerous games by two tenant clubs – Santa Fe and Millonarios, both of which consider the stadium their home since 1940s.

Apart from sport there were also quite a few concerts organised here, with James Brown coming first in 1973.