Stadium Mogadishu’s terrifying and Jungle-like appearance

Stadium Mogadishu, Somalia’s largest football play ground was constructed in 1978, and it was once one of the largest and most beautiful stadiums in Africa and the Arab world but the different situations and hardships it has been under going since 1991 made its appearance as Jungle-like and very terrifying.

If you get inside the stadium you will feel like that you are in forest, because of the large trees grown in and out side the stadium.

Somali football federation is currently waging more efforts on how to have stadium Mogadishu repaired so that it may reposes its former beauty and once again host the games including the national champion ship, the General Da’ud cup and many others that used to be held at Stadium Mogadishu in heydays.

It was early 1990s when Stadium Mogadishu first suffered heavy damages when USA and Pakistani peace keepers differently used as military bases from 1993 to 1995 during the failed United Nations peace keeping operation in Somalia.

At that time the foreign military powers caused heavy damages on the stadium, but after they vacated from it, Somali national football federation succeeded to repair the stadium and games were able to be held there.

But unfortunately Stadium Mogadishu once again turned into a military base in February 2007 when Ethiopian troops who were backing the Somali transitional federal government occupied.

The damage caused by the Ethiopian soldiers on the Stadium was much worse than that of the American and Pakistani peace keepers in 1990s and now we can say Stadium Mogadishu’s Jungle-like appearance is more terrifying.

Rather than the large trees grown in and outside it, stadium Mogadishu is destroyed more than 50% and it needs much reconstruction work.

Now Somalia has no a functioning central government which can help in the reconstruction work of the Stadium and it is only for the Somali football federation to do the job whether it gets assistance from the international sporting organizations or not.

More than 80% of Somali people are sports-loving and in particular they are football Addicts, but unfortunately they can not have a suitable field to watch football games as the result of the Italian-built Stadium Banadir being under reconstruction while Stadium Mogadishu also needs much reconstruction and investigation of explosive devices as it has been a military compound for the last two years.

Stadium Mogadishu was built in 1978 by Chinese government and it hosted many international games including the 8^th Arab students’ competition, East-central African nations’ cup, East-central African teams’ championship and many others.

But the first game to exhibit at Stadium Mogadishu after the end of its construction was a friendly game between Somali national team and a Chinese club Leonen.