It is one of the greatest sights on the planet for football fans -- emerging from the underground station and gazing across the ramp at the Maracana stadium, it looks as if some giant UFO has come to land to the north of Rio de Janeiro's city centre.
But if it really is a flying saucer, then the aliens would appear to have given up and gone away, leaving the stadium to the roaming cats. This great icon of the global game, built for the 1950 World Cup and rebuilt expensively for the 2014 edition, now lies idle and in a pitiful state.