The work “started with the preparation of the land” and will continue for “11 or 12 months”, António Sousa, president of the club promoting the project, Juventude Sport Clube, from Évora, told Lusa.

The infrastructure, whose construction is financed by a chain of hypermarkets - the value was not revealed by António Sousa -, will be created on the outskirts of the city, on municipal land measuring around 20,000 square meters, granted in surface rights to Juventude, after a public competition.

The stadium is one of the counterparts for the retail multinational to have, for 50 years, the right to surface 9,000 square meters of land in the current Juventude stadium, Sanches de Miranda, to build a supermarket.

“Juventude took advantage of an opportunity that arose” and, in collaboration with the hypermarket chain, it is possible to create this “positive virtuous cycle for the club and a stadium that Évora and Alentejo lacked”, stated the president.

Recalling that the Sanches de Miranda Stadium is many years old and has a pitch that “is the oldest in the country”, around 50 years old, António Sousa considered that “any renovation would cost more than building a new stadium”.

According to the director, the future stadium will have a natural grass pitch, a covered stand with a capacity for 2,500 people and another uncovered one for 500, four changing rooms, an auditorium, a gym, a club museum, and a restaurant.

“The entire infrastructure is also prepared for a second phase, which has no date” yet scheduled for progress and which encompasses “the expansion of the stadium’s capacity to 5,000 seats”, he added.

In addition to financing the new stadium, according to the president of Juventude, the same retail multinational will build a new football field in Sanches de Miranda with synthetic turf, changing rooms, and other spaces, such as a secretariat, meeting rooms, and a bar.

Work at Sanches de Miranda will only start when the contract for the new stadium is completed and the sports infrastructure is licensed, he highlighted.

The Alentejo club will also maintain the two sports pavilions it already has next to the Sanches de Miranda Stadium.

In relation to the new stadium, Évora City Council will have 212 hours of use per year, in return for the transfer of the right to surface the land, added the director.

For adjoining land, the construction of the Évora Football Association (AFE) and municipality academy is planned, with support from the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), as part of an application to the “One association, one academy” program.

This other equipment, which has financial support from the FPF in the order of 600 thousand euros, will involve a global investment of two million euros.

The future academy includes the construction of two fields, one for football with synthetic turf and the other for beach football, as well as a sports hall.