Monterrey Stadium Set for Four World Cup Games at Estadio BBVA
Monterrey Stadium, usually known as Estadio BBVA, will host four World Cup games this summer, including a round of 32 match. The venue sits in the shadow of Cerro de la Silla, tying a major tournament site to one of Monterrey’s most recognizable landmarks and the local stories built around it.
The mountain rises 1,820 metres above sea level in the Sierra Madre Oriental, and its outline has long shaped how the city sees the stadium’s setting. That backdrop has fed nicknames for the peak — the Giant of Monterrey, the Silent Guardian and the Crown of the City — while the stadium now moves from local symbol to World Cup stage.
Cerro de la Silla and Estadio BBVA
Estadio BBVA is built in the shadow of Cerro de la Silla, whose name means “saddle hill” in English. The link between the venue and the mountain is central to the way the stadium is described in Monterrey, where the site is treated less like a neutral arena and more like part of the city’s identity.
That identity has also carried stranger claims. In January 2004, Leonardo Samaniego Gallegos said he was on nighttime rounds on the outskirts of Monterrey when he saw a mysterious figure about five minutes from where the stadium now stands and just below Cerro de la Silla.
Leonardo Samaniego Gallegos account
Samaniego Gallegos later said he spent two days in hospital after the incident. In a 2019 YouTube interview with paranormal investigator A. Guts Villarreal, he described what he saw with the line: “A person fell from a tree, moving as if they were a bag of rubbish” and added, “She stopped about 50 metres from the ground after falling backwards with her hands like this,” before saying the creature’s eyes were “completely black.”
He also said, “lost consciousness until my commander came and saw I’d fainted,” and in TV reports from the time he said, “she didn’t have a broom or anything, she was flying by herself.” The Nuevo Leon OVNI Club carried out its own investigations in the area and interviewed him, and Mexico’s foremost UFOlogist Jaime Maussan invited him onto his TV show.
Monterrey World Cup schedule
That history now sits beside a far more concrete summer assignment. Estadio BBVA will stage four World Cup games, and one of them is a round of 32 match. For fans and visitors, the stadium’s profile is no longer only about its mountain backdrop or the stories told around it; it is now one of the tournament venues carrying real knockout-round weight.
The setting is part of the draw, but the schedule is the news. Monterrey gets four games, and the stadium’s place beneath Cerro de la Silla means the World Cup will arrive at a venue already wrapped in local identity, long-running legends and one of the city’s most repeated mystery tales.
