Rodrigo Corona
Monterrey, Mexico (EFE)
The painting that represents the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL), which for the last 13 years has had one of the most expensive payrolls in Mexico that has allowed it to be the most successful in the country in that time, aspires to be finished in 2025.
However, at the moment the project is on hold since, although it has the support of the governor of Nuevo León, Samuel García, the Local Congress has not authorized the transfer of the land to the club owned by Cemex on loan, which in At the moment they are home to a stadium for children’s American football and a velodrome.
The representatives of the state located in northern Mexico require information regarding where the financing will come from, the project administrator and the benefit that the population of Nuevo León will receive.
The information that both the Tigers, Sinergia Deportiva, a Cemex subsidiary that manages the team, and García have made public is the cost, the capacity, 65,000 fans, that the property will have spaces to house a hotel and even classrooms for the UANL and that Juego de Pelota is the company that will develop the project with private money.
In addition, this new stadium is intended to put Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León and home of the Tigres, as a candidate to host an NFL regular season game as the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City has done since 2005.
This was embodied in a memorandum signed by directors of Sinergia Deportiva, UANL, Juego de Pelota and García himself. The document has been hidden from citizens who have requested it via transparency from the authorities due to a “confidentiality clause”.
Juego de Pelota is a company owned by Mexican businessman César Esparza and is headquartered in New York, United States. Juego de Pelota has been behind the projects for soccer stadiums in Verona, Italy and in Mérida, Mexico, but like the one for the Tigres, they have not yet been carried out.
Cemex entrusted Esparza with the work that will put the cats at the same level as their city rival, the Rayados del Monterrey, who in 2015 inaugurated the BBVA Stadium, the most modern in the country that will host the 2026 World Cup that Mexico will organize with the United States and Canada.
The current stadium of the Tigers, the Universitario, was built in 1967 and belongs to the UANL, which as part of the agreement with Sinergia deportiva lends it to the cats.
The original plan of the Tigers was to renew the Universitario, but the pressure from their fans, who are looking for one that outshines BBVA, and García, a feline follower and aspiring candidate for president of Mexico, who had the project as a campaign promise, They made him think of a new complex.
“During the campaign we said that we were going for a new stadium for a new Nuevo León, and today we lay the first stone, the first legal document is signed, the memorandum of understanding through which this new stadium begins,” García explained in January 2022.