Salalah’s sprawling stadium likely to open during khareef

SALALAH, Feb 24 - Salalah soon to have a stadium with 20,000 sitting capacity and all the facilities of an international football stadium. Moosa bin Ahmed al Mashali, Director-General of Sports Affairs in Dhofar, called this new facility a state-of-the-art structure which can host all sorts of domestic and international football matches. The stadium, according to him, is part of the Saada Sports Complex, which is spread over 500,000 square metres. The total area of the stadium is about 20,000 square metres with a provision of two VIP grandstands.

Al Mashali called it a fabulous stadium, which in all likelihood, would be ready for operation by khareef this year. The stadium is coming as an expansion of Saada Sports Complex, which already had a stadium with a capacity of 10,000 people. The expansion work had started during the last quarter of 2016. “This is something wonderful not only for the people of Salalah or Dhofar, but for the whole country. With this we can avail the opportunity of hosting big football events all through the year.”

“Salalah has unique advantage of khareef season during which visitors from all over the Middle East arrive here. Football being a popular sport in the Middle East, we can host big events during the season to attract more and more visitors,” he said, and added that 95 per cent work on the stadium was complete. From next season all the football events, which were happening at Awqad-based stadium in western Salalah, would be shifted to the new stadium. Al Mashali is hopeful of launching the stadium with some good events and puts emphasis on the fact that as part of the expansion new elevation has been added to it.

He put emphasis on the fact that the new facilities would be huge value to the existing Saada Sports Complex, which has Olympic standard swimming pool and a multipurpose hall. The multipurpose hall is equipped with organising volley ball, handball and many other sporting and social activities. It has two tennis courts also. The complex is meant mainly for sports but sometimes some events for children with special needs etc are also organised. “The complex also offers membership to use the complex’ facilities like swimming pool and other physical activities for both men and women. The membership is open to all, including the expatriates,” said Al Mashali.