Stadiums gone and missed: the old Estádio da Luz | OneFootball

The famous “Terceiro Anel” (Third Tier) was an enormous stand that accommodated an ocean of fans

It wasn’t a stadium. It was a cathedral. A football temple like Portugal had never seen. Sport Lisboa e Benfica’s Estádio da Luz captured the club’s soul to the fullest. It was not just about the sheer size of it, but what it meant. Finally, a home for a wandering club, finally a place of worship for the thousands of faithful. Finally, a place where their unforgettable conquests would forever be remembered. For half a century, the Estádio da Luz wasn’t just Portugal’s biggest football ground. It was an intrinsic part of the club’s very soul.

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The final day. Benfica hosted Santa Clara, a club that was the same red and white, had a similar crest and which had grown in awe of the reputation of the Eagles. It was a fitting finale for a place where so many memories had been sewn over decades. It was a traumatic event. The new stadium was being built next door, and the future was already contemplating the past, but somehow, there was a void that would never be filled again.

Benfica were already a great club before they landed at da Luz in 1954, but it was there that they became immortal, and you can’t just repeat that feeling. A Simão Sabrosa penalty was all that separated the sides as if the players, as well as the crowd, were not able to emotionally cope with that feeling altogether. The Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury performed before the match, and club legends like Sven-Göran Eriksson, Rui Costa, Eusébio and Toni were present to remember the many nights the club had enjoyed over the decades in style. Still, half a century had passed by too fast.

Benfica v Santa Clara, 22 March 2003, was the final match at the old Estádio da Luz

A club without a home

The “Luz” was more than just a home. It was Benfica’s first true own football ground. The club known as Sport Lisboa, founded near the banks of the River Tagus, in the Belém neighbourhood, had been forced to merge with Club Benfica, which was based in the borough of Benfica, then on the northern limits of the Portuguese capital. As Belenenses came to occupy the supporting areas of the Restelo, Benfica were forced to move somewhere else, not for the last time in their history.

The club already had followers from every side of town, but they didn’t have a particular place to settle in. They had played in the Feiteira, in Benfica and then the Amoreiras, a football stadium built near the city’s aqueduct in 1925 that belonged to the club and could host up to 20,000 supporters in the 1930s. It was there that they enjoyed their first major national trophies, as they claimed the Campeonato de Portugal, the newly created football league and their first Portuguese Cup.

Portugal’s “New Deal” triggers stadium project

Then, in 1940, big news. Oliveira Salazar wanted to improve the nation’s economy by building a set of infrastructures badly needed, following the example of America’s “New Deal” public works programme after the 1929 crash. Housing, roads, hospitals and even football grounds became part of a national policy aimed at catapulting Portugal closer to its European neighbours and also as a way to fight unemployment and increase wealth.

One of the most advanced plans was the highway that would connect Lisbon with the western areas of Oeiras, Loures and Sintra. To reach the city, the new road would end in a bridge that connected it downtown and whose blueprint determined it had to cross the lands where the Amoreiras ground stood. Benfica didn’t muster a word of complaint, and it was even promised that Salazar had an idea for a big national ground to be shared by all Lisbon clubs in the Monsanto Park, belonging to the city hall, but that plan never came through. The Jamor was the place where the new national stadium was built, further west, and Benfica were forced to rent the Campo Grande, a stadium that officially belonged to their city rivals, Sporting. To avoid misinterpretations, Sporting rented the ground to the city hall, who in turn did the same with Benfica, a situation that wasn’t well received by supporters who demanded a home of their own.

Six years later, the cabinet promised Benfica they would help find a location where they could build a new stadium in the Benfica area, so that they could return to what was, partially, their birthplace. Despite all those promises, construction on the land where the new stadium was to be built only began in 1953, six years after it had been promised.

Fans help build the stadium – literally

It was the club’s members and supporters who financed the works, not only by contributing economically but also by buying concrete and lending a hand in the building of the stadium itself, particularly on weekends. Even rival clubs helped out, acknowledging it was time for Benfica to be able to have its own proper ground. The lands initially belonged to the city hall, and only in 1969 were the club able to buy them fully. By then, the ground was already known as the Cathedral.

After a year and a half, da Luz was finally inaugurated on the 1st of December. Like with all football stadiums of the time, the regime picked dates carefully, and the national holiday celebrating the reconquered independence from Spain (the Restauração da Independência national holiday) was a good example.

The enormous Eagle statue is and continues to be a distinctive feature of the Estádio da Luz

Despite being popularly known as Estádio da Luz because of its location in the Lisbon borough of Luz, the official name registered was Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, and it remained so until its very end. Ironically, in its first years, the stadium was known as de Carnide, because it was located near the area with that name, although it officially belongs to the Benfica district. More than 40,000 people flocked into the ground to watch all the ceremonial events that preceded a friendly match between the home side and FC Porto. Salazar didn’t attend, but a statement from the head of state was read out loud by Francisco Craveiro Lopes, the President of the Republic, to public acclaim.

Topless bowl

The first layout of the ground included two circular rings without a tarmac track – unlike Porto and Sporting’s new grounds – that created a vibrant atmosphere. It was an open bowl, with no covered stands, again, unlike what the new Antas and the upcoming José de Alvalade stadiums would sport. Porto had invited Benfica for the inauguration of their new home two years prior, when the Dragons were soundly defeated 8-2, and the northerners returned the favour by attending the celebrations. Again, the visitors took on the role of party poopers, Porto winning 3-1. But Benfica claimed a more important triumph, months later, that gave them the league title of the 1953/54 campaign. The first of many won at their new home.

Over the following years, it became clear that the stadium, although the biggest in Portugal, was proving too small by the day as Benfica surpassed city rivals Sporting to become the greatest sporting force in the land. The professionalisation powered by Otto Gloria and the careful scouting of African gems such as José Águas, Mário Coluna and then Eusébio, gave Benfica the right tools so that they could put their new ground to good use. The gate income also helped to muster a brilliant football side who claimed back-to-back European Cup trophies between 1961 and 1962 and several other finals lost in the same decade, as they also dominated the national league in style.

Capacity for over 120,000 fans… exceeded!

The third tier, popularly known as Terceiro Anel, was initially added in 1960 but was only completed after the club sold Chalana do Bordeaux in 1984, thus making the Estádio da Luz one of the greatest football grounds in the world. It could host up to 120,000 supporters, and when Portugal hosted Brazil for the 1991 Under-20 World Cup final, everyone agreed the number of people present far exceeded its famous maximum attendance numbers.

The ground had been built in an area that was already expanding in the 1950s, but by the 1980s, the Segunda Circular highway that passed alongside the ground had turned it into a football ground located in Lisbon’s new downtown and no longer on its outer rim. By then, the club had already enjoyed their finest hour, and the Inferno da Luz (Hell of the Luz) had earned fame beyond Portugal’s borders. Every time a side came to Lisbon to face the Eagles in European cups, they would be met with a passionate crowd that reverberated the ground as if another earthquake was about to hit Lisbon again.

Searing cauldron

Famously, Carlos Mozer, the Brazilian centre-back who played for Benfica before moving to Marseille, related how his teammates were scared of stepping back onto the pitch as the French champions visited Benfica for a decisive away leg of a European Cup semifinal, won by a famous Vata handball goal. The incredible explosion of noise and sheer ecstasy in the stands triggered by the goal is a perfect example of how the stadium would transform itself into an authentic cauldron.

It was not just the noise or the sheer side of it. The four towers at each end, where floodlights were installed in 1958, gave it a different aura, and later the statue built in honour of Eusébio served as a reminder of the emotional importance of the ground, not only in Benfica’s history but also in world football as well. Two years later, the club decided to modernise itself by opening a store where supporters could buy merchandising but by then the club was in a financial mess. In 1997, UEFA’s new legislation made it mandatory for all grounds to be seated, reducing capacity to 78,000, which was still one of the world’s largest stadiums at the time.

New stadium conundrum

Come 1999, with Portugal winning the right to host the 2004 European Championship, talk of what to do with the Estádio da Luz ground dominated the news. Some wanted Benfica to remain where they were, with the stadium improved with better conditions for supporters and covered in its entirety. Others resuscitated the idea that Lisbon should build a mega stadium, the biggest in the world, to host both Sporting and Benfica matches, as with Italy’s San Siro for Inter and AC Milan. Both ideas were eventually discarded as plans for a new ground went ahead.

It would be built where the training pitches were, juxtaposing the old ground partially, and construction began in 2001, taking almost three years to complete. Benfica only played a third of the 2002/03 campaign in their home ground, moving briefly to the Estádio do Jamor for the rest of the season and the beginning of the following season before the new Luz was finally opened on 25 October 2003, nine months before the Euros. The fact that the previous years had been unhappy for the Benfica family made the event even more strange. The last league title celebrated had been in 1994, and for most of the late 1990s, Benfica played to a near-empty, dilapidated home.

Yet, the Cathedral meant much more. It was a symbol of the club’s golden age, a reflection of a time when they were indisputably one of the world’s greatest sides. It was physically huge and helped Benfica, as a club, as well as players on the pitch and supporters in the stands, feel as immense as the ground that was in their hearts. Over the past two decades, the new Estádio da Luz has created memories of its own, from the Euro 2004 final to the Champions League finals of 2014 and 2020, without forgetting Benfica’s Tetra championship run won between 2014 and 2017.

Where never-to-be-forgotten memories were forged

But there was nothing quite like the place where it all began. They are memories tattooed in the hearts of those who experienced them first-hand as Benfica defied the odds to become football gods in their own right, the atmosphere in those huge concrete stands as exhilarating as the action on the pitch down below.

“A Temple falls, but the Faith continues” read a huge banner on the day of the final match at the old Estádio da Luz