Brasilia is a weirdly disconnected place at the best of times but the Mane Garrincha is entirely dislocated from anything approaching civilisation, sitting in the middle of a dust bowl next to a main road. There is nothing but undulating gravel around it. To call it under-developed would be to give it too much credit.
There are metal railings everywhere, to no obvious end. The colossal car park is empty but for a cluster of turquoise city buses; the local government has re-purposed the space to create a temporary depot. An underground tunnel that once took journalists through to the media centre is now padlocked shut and filled with scrap metal. The concrete on the concourse is turning to rubble.
I went to visit the Estádio Mané Garrincha in Brasília – the second most expensive football stadium ever at the time of its completion – to see what it looks like now. Read about it on The Athletic.
