Estadio Bello Horizonte Rey Pelé is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

stadium located in

Villavicencio Villavicencio () is a city and municipality in Colombia. Capital of Meta Department, it was founded on April 6, 1840. The city had an urban population of approximately 531,275 inhabitants in 2018.https://www.dane.gov.co/files/varios/informacion ...

, Colombia. The stadium, built in 1958, has a capacity of 15,000 people and was named after Manuel Calle Lombana, mayor of Villavicencio in 1958, thus receiving the nickname of ''Macal''.

Categoría Primera B Categoría Primera B, commonly referred to as Torneo BetPlay Dimayor due to sponsorship by online betting company BetPlay (formerly ''Torneo Águila''), is the second-division football league in Colombia. Format DIMAYOR has applied a new forma ...

club Llaneros play their home matches at this stadium.

History

On 4 January 2023, the Governor of

Meta Department Meta () is a departments of Colombia, department of Colombia. It is close to the geographic center of the country, to the east of the Andean mountains. A large portion of the department, which is also crossed by the Meta River, is covered by a ...

Juan Guillermo Zuluaga announced the renaming of the stadium to ''Estadio Bello Horizonte Rey Pelé'', following a suggestion by

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

President

Gianni Infantino Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino (; born 23 March 1970) is a Swiss football administrator with Italian citizenship and the current president of FIFA. He was elected President of FIFA during the 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress in February 2016. He ...

to all countries to name one stadium in tribute to Brazilian footballer

Pelé Edson Arantes do Nascimento (; born 23 October 1940), known as Pelé (), is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a forward. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and labelled "the greatest" by FIFA, ...

, in the aftermath of his death on 29 December 2022.

References

Football venues in Colombia Sports venues completed in 1958 {{Colombia-sports-venue-stub