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Brazilian club abandons World Cup stadium

Xinhua, March 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

Brazilian football club Bahia has announced plans to abandon the Fonte Nova arena, raising fears the venue could become a World Cup white elephant.

The Salvador-based club said in a statement on Monday that Fonte Nova's operating consortium had not provided satisfactory terms to continue playing at the stadium.

"Despite four months of talks, we did not receive a single proposal in which the fans of the club were valued," Bahia president Marcelo Sant'Anna said.

He added that the club was "open to negotiate new conditions that respected Bahia's fans".

A spokesperson for the stadium's operating concessionaire could not immediately be reached for comment.

Fonte Nova was revamped for last year's World Cup at a cost of around 200 million US dollars. It hosted six matches during football's showpiece tournament.

Brazil spent an estimated 3.6 billion US dollars to build and renovate its 12 World Cup venues.

Some of the stadiums, like Cuiaba's Arena Pantanal, Brasilia's Mane Garrincha stadium and Arena da Amazonia in Manaus, have no local first division football teams. Endi