From the Metropolitan to the Belvedere: the modest Liverpool stadium that hosts Luis Suárez’s Nacional

Luis Suarez revolutionized Uruguay as soon as he decided to return Montevideo National playing in these months before the World Cup in Qatar 2022, his great goal. He did it after flirting with the possibility of joining the River to go to the Copa Libertadores. But since Marcelo Gallardo’s team was excluded against Velez, he chose the Tricolore, which was still fighting in the Copa Sudamericana. The Bag has been eliminated, however, and the Gunslinger must only play the local championship. And there he encounters realities totally opposite to those he experienced in Europe until recently.

This Sunday, starting at 15:30, the Nacional will visit Liverpool de Montevideo, for the third round of the closing tournament. And Suárez was called upon to contribute to the cause of a team that won and lost in his two appearances. His rival, meanwhile, has only one point due to a draw and a fall.

However, the big difference Suárez experiences has to do with the infrastructure of the Uruguayan football fieldsvery different from the stadiums in which he played, such as the Metropolitano in Madrid, the home of Atlético, the Camp Nou in Barcelona or the legendary Anfield in Liverpool.

This Sunday he was seen entering the dressing room of the Belvedere stadium, home to modest Liverpool, which has a capacity of just under eight thousand spectators and structures that bear little resemblance to those of the old sets that surrounded the Gunslinger. The locker room entrance is more like a neighborhood soccer field than a First Division club.

A bit of history

The stadium has been owned by Liverpool since 1938 after being the home of the Montevideo Wanderers and the now deceased Uruguayan Platense who used it until the Ministry of Public Health asked for land to build a hospital. The health center was never built and this has allowed Liverpool to maintain it since 1938. Only 62 years later was it able to purchase it from the Uruguayan state.

Eye, the modest does not take away the historical. The Belvedere stadium, located in the district of the same name, in the center-south of the capital, It was the place where the Uruguayan team used blue clothing for the first time that characterizes it. Therefore, Suárez has allowed himself the pleasure of treading on land that has little luxury but a lot of mystique.