Oita and its venue are no strangers to major international sports events, having hosted matches for the 2002 Fifa World Cup and creating an internationally covered human interest story featuring the Cameroon national team and the village that hosted their camp.

The strong bonds that developed between the village and Cameroon expanded to include the entire prefecture.

The “Big Eye” is a world-class multi-purpose stadium that opened in May 2001 and originally had a capacity of 43,000.

But after the 2002 Fifa World Cup ended, 3,000 movable seats in front of the ground were removed, so its current capacity is 40,000.

The stadium hosted two first-round games in 2002 as well as the Round-of-16 match between Sweden and Senegal, which the African side won 2-1 after extra-time.