Tickets
for the 45 480-seater new Agadir Stadium have been sold out ahead of Friday's
friendly international clash between Morocco and South Africa scheduled to kick
off at 21h00 SA time.
Agadir
has been built for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations tournament which Morocco will
host. This is the first time the brand new stadium will be utilized. It will
also host four matches of the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup in December this year.
The
multi-purpose stadium will mainly be used for football and will be home to local
club Hassania Union Sportive of Agadir (HUSA), who have been using Stade Al
Inbiaat where Bafana Bafana trained on Wednesday afternoon.
Hassania
is an emerging football powerhouse in Morocco, and have twice won the Moroccan
league title.
The
state-of-the-art stadium can house 5000 VIP personnel and has 288 media seats,
four locker rooms complete with sauna as well as eight athletics locker rooms.
Agadir
itself is a major city in the southwest of Morocco and is the capital of
Agadir-Ida Ou Tanane.
The
city is located on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, near the foot of the Atlas
Mountains.
The
city of Agadir together with the neighbouring cities of Inezgane and Ait
Melloul were estimated in 2013 to have 609,088 inhabitants.
Agadir
is one of the major urban centres of Morocco, the seventh largest extended
urban area of the country after Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, Marrakech, Meknes, and
Tangier.
The
city has been completely rebuilt after an earthquake destroyed it in 1960,
which claimed the lives of an estimated 15-thousand people.
Agadir
is now the largest seaside resort in Morocco, where foreign tourists and many
residents are attracted by an unusually mild year-round climate.
- SAFA
