Background
This is the first time a world-class football stadium has been built in the Eastern Cape province. The city of Port Elizabeth did not have a large scale football facility, as under the apartheid government, football was not given much funding. Football clubs in the city had to make use of smaller scale venues throughout the city. Before this stadium was built, most large football matches were played at the EPRU Stadium, the city's rugby ground. The EPRU Stadium was often problematic for football, as it normally hosts rugby matches, thus the playing surface was not of a great standard. When Port Elizabeth was chosen as a host city for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the city decided against upgrading the EPRU Stadium. This was because it would have needed to be almost completely rebuilt, in order to be upgraded to FIFA requirements. The city then decided on building a brand new, multipurpose stadium, in the heart of the city.
Inevitably, there was a great deal of speculation about the status of stadium construction in the run-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with the requirement that all the FIFA World Cup host stadiums must be completed by January 2010. The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium was the first of five new stadiums to start construction. The other new stadiums are in Cape Town, Durban, Polokwane and Nelspruit.
The stadium is named after the administrative district which the stadium is within, the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, itself named after Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa. The Nelson Mandela Bay area is made up of the city of Port Elizabeth, the towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, as well as smaller settlements.
The stadium is sometimes incorrectly called the 'Nelson Mandela Stadium' in the media. This may lead to confusion, as there is a Nelson Mandela Stadium in Kampala, Uganda. It is also sometimes mistakenly claimed that the stadium is named after Mandela, rather than the metropolitan area named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium
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