Football-mad Morocco dreams of a World Cup final in its own ark

Date:

The rendering is dramatic, a vast white stadium inspired by the design of a Maghrebi communal tent, known as a moussem.The language used to describe it is no less flowery: think of it as “almost like a Noah’s Ark, a place for all nature and animals to come together”, says Tarik Oualalou, head of Paris architecture firm Oualalou + Choi, one of five teams in the design consortium.Then there is the size. Once finished, the 115,000-capacity Grand Stade Hassan II near Casablanca could be the world’s largest football stadium – and location for the final of the 2030 World Cup Morocco is co-hosting with Spain and Portugal.But like all grand stadium projects, there are questions over its cost, funding and how it will be built.It remains unclear if private backing will supplement the funding from state coffers. There is also speculation about the possible involvement of China, which built the main stadium for this year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast as part of its…

Share post:

Subscribe

Popular

More like this
Related