Estadio Morelos

The stand still called Coloso de Quinceo answers to a name most people in Morelia never use — the ground carries a saint's-day surname, José María Morelos y Pavón, but the nickname refers to something closer: the volcano that overlooks the city. Estadio Morelos replaced Venustiano Carranza as home to Atlético Morelia and was meant to be ready well before it was. Work began in 1984 as part of the country's build-out for the 1986 World Cup, and then stopped — ground conditions on the site would not cooperate, and the project sat unfinished through most of the decade before construction resumed in 1988. It opened on 9 April 1989, with Atlético Morelia beating Club América 2-1 in the first match played there.

The pitch has always been natural grass, and the ground never wandered from its original role as a single-club home in a city that, unlike its Bajío neighbours, kept its football on one site rather than spreading it across venues built and rebuilt for World Cups. What became of the stadium after Monarcas Morelia's later years is not part of this account — only that it stood, from that April night in 1989, as Morelia's answer to the stadiums going up elsewhere in Mexico for reasons that had nothing to do with football alone.