| La Bombonera (Spanish pronunciation: ; English: The Chocolate Box), officially named Alberto José Armando Stadium (Spanish: Estadio Alberto José Armando; Spanish pronunciation: ) is an association football stadium located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The stadium is owned by Boca Juniors, a professional sports club based in the La Boca neighbourhood and one of Argentina's premier teams, which has over 18 million fans, the most in Argentina and around 40% of the country's total population. The unusual shape of the stadium has led to it having excellent acoustics and the Boca support being nicknamed "La Doce". The pitch at La Bombonera is 105m × 68m.
In 1986, the stadium was officially named for the first time as "Dr. Camilo Cichero," in honor of the club president who championed its construction. In 2000, it was renamed after Alberto José Armando, a two-time president of Boca Juniors. However, it is more commonly known as "La Bombonera" (The Chocolate Box), a name inspired by a personal anecdote from its architect, Viktor Sulčič, who likened the stadium's structure to that of a box of chocolates.
The stadium is widely regarded as one of the most iconic stadiums in the world due to its design, club's history, iconic matches, intense atmosphere and tales of legendary players that stepped onto the pitch like Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, Alfredo Di Stefano, Pelé, Ronaldo, Romario, Mario Kempes, Juan Román Riquelme, Gabriel Batistuta, Edinson Cavani and more. It has been declared of public interest by the government of Buenos Aires, the autonomous capital city. Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License - Full article |
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