The FIFA World Cup™ comes to Manaus

Manaus is one of the twelve selected host cities for the 2014 FIFA World Cup (see map below). There is already an official state website for this - see some of it in English, but much of it only in Portuguese. So far, it has proven difficult to use and somewhat disappointing in terms of content. Here on these pages we will just focus on trying to bring together relevant local information which you might not find in English elsewhere, and passing on links which we feel may be of use or interest.

So far, we can tell you that the original stadium here, popularly known as Vivaldão, has already been demolished to make way for the new World Cup stadium. In addition to this, there are plans to build a monorail linking the city centre with the stadium and the outlying districts to the north (although not, strangely, to the airport, which seems pretty daft to us). Other projects are a bit more obscure, although we note that the project for the rejuvination of the Ponta Negra area has already started - at least a large section of the area extending from the Hotel Tropical east along the riverside has been closed off and screened.

Not much else is particularly evident, although we are assured that much work is going on behind the scenes with respect to funding and planning upgrades to the airport and port. It is also fairly widely hoped that plans to modernise the road system both within the city centre and along/around the main corridors leading north are underway, while something which has been a bone of contention for many years - the continuing total absence of broadband internet in Manaus - seems, at least temporarily, to have fallen off the radar.

With so little information easily available to the mere mortals, mostly due to normal Brazilian bureaucracy and the usual hopeless lack of transparency and accountability, it is difficult to know precisely what´s going on, however the more high-profile plans we know about include:


There is also of course the well-publicised bridge across the Rio Negro, although this purports to be wholly independent of World Cup projects. Work on the bridge continues, and although we have the usual dearth of information about it, it looks to be nearing completion. More as we find it, and in the meantime here are the links we´ve found so far, together with 'before and after´ images of the stadium.

http://www.copa2014.org.br/en/news/3436/MANAUS+WORK+PACKAGE+FOR+2014.html Interesting.

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/brazil2014/index.html Official FIFA site.

http://www.manauscopa2014.com/site/index2.php Probably the official State site .