Arena do Jacaré

Sete Lagoas built its stadium the way many mid-table Minas Gerais clubs did in the last generation: not out of ambition, but because the old ground was sold to pay for it. Democrata's original home went for the land, and the proceeds, topped up to roughly 3.5 million reais, put up what opened on 28 January 2006 as a modest 18,000-seat ground. The site itself came as a gift from Joaquim Henrique Nogueira, whose name the stadium carries officially, even as it is known locally as Arena do Jacaré.

The bigger story came later. When Belo Horizonte's Mineirão closed for its World Cup 2014 rebuild, the state government redirected 8.6 million reais into Sete Lagoas, fitting plastic seating, new dressing rooms and floodlights, and pushing capacity up to 25,000 — a scale well beyond what the club's own attendances required. That state investment made the Arena do Jacaré a stand-in top-flight venue for a period, something few grounds its size get the chance to be.

What followed after 2014 was less flattering: roughly 5,000 seats were shut off, reportedly over structural concerns, and the stadium has operated below its rebuilt capacity since, with restoration of the closed sections talked about rather than scheduled. The pitch is natural grass, and recent maintenance work has included winter-seed treatment to keep the surface playable through the dry season — a detail that matters more here than at grounds with less demanding turf programmes.