Estadio Tomás Beggan Correa is a football stadium in the Ricardo Brugada neighbourhood—commonly known as La Chacarita—of Asunción, Paraguay. It is the home ground of Resistencia Sport Club. The venue is located at approximately 25°16′47″S 57°37′32″W, on the banks of the Paraguay River.
Name
The stadium is named in honour of a former president of Resistencia Sport Club, under whose administration the club won its first official title, the Segunda División (second division) championship, in 1966. The naming therefore commemorates a club official rather than a geographic or sporting figure of wider national significance.
Capacity and characteristics
Sources give differing capacity figures. Wikipedia and several football databases list a capacity of approximately 3,500 spectators, while some specialised stadium databases cite figures of about 5,700. The playing surface is natural grass, with reported pitch dimensions of 105 × 67 metres. The stadium is also known by the nicknames La Fortaleza Celeste, El Lapachal, and El Balcón.
A distinctive feature of the ground is a large lapacho (pink trumpet) tree growing among the terraces. The tree was reportedly planted by club officials in 1999, when the club was promoted to the Primera División; of the two lapacho trees originally planted, only the larger survived. In 2017, on the occasion of the club's centenary, the surviving tree was declared an honorary member ("socio honorario") of the club.
History
The site's origins date to the club's early years around 1917, when it consisted of little more than an uneven football pitch on the riverside. Owing to the lack of infrastructure, the club was unable to affiliate with the Asociación Paraguaya de Fútbol during that period and was instead affiliated with the Federación Paraguaya de Deportes, a parallel league for amateur clubs, between 1936 and 1950. From 1951, following affiliation with the Asociación Paraguaya de Fútbol, the club began professional participation and gradually improved the ground, adding wooden seating for spectators.
Further improvements accompanied the club's promotions to the Primera División in 1976, 1977, 1981 and 1999. One Spanish-language source lists the stadium's official opening year as 2000. The ground has historically not hosted major fixtures, largely because of its limited capacity and its location.
During the flooding of the Paraguay River at the end of 2015, the playing field was inundated and the facilities were severely affected. In December 2016, on the club's 99th anniversary, a project was announced to expand capacity to approximately 6,500 people; this plan was not fully realised, and only a small section of the southern terrace was enlarged the following year.
Summary
The Estadio Tomás Beggan Correa is a modest, well-documented club football ground in Asunción, associated principally with Resistencia Sport Club. It appears in reference works such as Wikipedia and in football stadium databases, so it is an established (if minor) sporting venue rather than an obscure or unverifiable term. Published capacity figures vary between sources, and such discrepancies should be treated as a matter of uncertainty rather than resolved fact.
