So two starters for costa rica and a keeper and a field player for honduras. Not much of an advantage at all. I live in Chicago.
I think three of the eleven starters for CR in the last match play at altitude. I will concede that both Honduras and CR have more players in Europe than I expected, though not quite at the level of the USMNT I personally wouldn't give any advantage away. I also would focus on the players and how they don't need to travel extra far to play in altitude, which is harder on their bodies. Just an idealist with no connection to the Rocky Mountains? Because there is no good reason to play in the Rockies other than some sense of regional entitlement.
I'd really prefer the Fed play in venues like KC and CBus more frequently than RFK and Soldier Field, and I live in Chicago. Really, any MLS site not named Home Depot Center should be in consideration. IMO, priority 1 should be limiting wear and tear for the Euro players, and priority 1a should be ensuring a partisan home crowd. That said, I think we all know our Fed well enough to realize that they'll schedule the games in the venues that will make them the most money, Mexico in CBus aside. They'll have more faith in our team being better than whoever we play than they will indifference about lost gate reciepts.
Regarding Costa Rica, I'm actually looking forward to playing them at their new National Stadium. With real grass to play on and the fans so far away from the field, I can't imagine it having anything like the intimidation factor that Saprissa Stadium had.
Hopefully the US is not drawn to play at Costa Rica on the Feb 6th date. That new National Stadium in San José, Costa Rica is going to have some very heavy use (triple-headers during the group stage, and 14 total competitive matches over 10 days) in late January for the UNCAF Copa Centroamericana fixtures. I'm guessing that field surface won't be in the greatest of condition if Costa Rica is playing a WCQ at home on Feb 6. Any chance fifa.com will stream that Concacaf HEX draw live, or that it might air live on Univision?
Has this been suggested/discussed before? In interest of achieving pro-US home crowds, why not offer tickets, not just to season-ticket holders of that venue's club, but to those of all US-based MLS and lower division clubs?
You have two first person accounts saying there were more US fans. I can't believe people have so little faith in our own fan base. There are only 1.1 million Brazilians in the US. There are more US soccer fans than that. Look at the TV numbers. The USA Ghana match drew 19.4 million viewers (only 4 million less than the final). That was the largest soccer audience in history at the time. A couple days earlier, the Algeria game was the most watched soccer game ever on ESPN with 6 million viewers.
And will still be 100x better than the sh!t astroturf at Saprissa. I swear that stuff came from Riverfront Stadium when they tore that place down.
Having never played a Saprissa myself, I was under the impression that the field did in fact get upgraded to a more modern and good/soft (all be it still fake) plastic surface at some point in recent years (even as work on the new Costa Rica National Stadium was being built). Not that the issue (solely) at playing WCQ at Saprissa previously was the old/hard turf, it was more so the imposing proximity of the home crowd working well against the visitor's efforts. Natural grass (at least that which is well maintained) will always be preferable to a fake surface for top-level football. But a natural field that gets overused (as very well might be the case in January at the Costa Rica National Stadium) can have its downsides. Certainly, I'm much happier about the US (likely) going to play at the new (and naturally surfaced, and with more room between the field touchlines and the stands) Costa Rica National Stadium, but I'd just rather that be a bit later in 2013, and not (hypothetically on 2/6) so soon after the field is heavily used in January.
I also live in Chicago so I have heard other accounts. There are a lot of band wagon fans here in the USA. They follow teams like Spain, Brazil, Argentina, etc. Most of the NFL stadiums are filled with their supporters when we play against those teams. And they are not nessisarily born in those countries. TV ratings are nice but I think it is a lot like the olympics in which the spectacle brings on people who normally dont give a darn in between 4 year stints.
UW football is supposed to be at the new Husky Stadium next year, but I'm not optimistic that they would switch to grass then after hearing what the GM/part owner said on ESPN during the Seattle/Portland match (He basically said it's not very likely). A Gold Cup game next year is more likely I think.
It may have been upgraded, but it clearly was not a field turf surface. I believe there is a track around the field as well.
Hard to know, but according to wikipedia: Not that it matters one way of the other, as it appears Costa Rica is playing WCQs this cycle at San Jose Estadio Nacional. (Although I'm guessing they might find a way for some "rainy season" Hex home dates to get moved to Saprissa for certain opponents.)
1.) Big USA qualifiers regularly draw over 1 million viewers on English TV 2.) An ambitious federation would try to get those 20 million "spectacle" fans to come to qualifiers and friendlies. That's how you grow your fan base.
Hey, if we insist on playing Mexico in Crew Stadium until they beat us, it would be smart for Costa Rica to do the same.
It is worth noting that the US Soccer fanbase is spread (somewhat thinly) over a huge geographic area and fan travel for match attendance is a concern/challenge for many (especially for non-weekend matches). And it is also worth recognizing that the US Soccer fanbase exists in this home country alongside fanbases of some/many foreign national teams (and those fanbases may be smaller but perhaps more passionate and willing to travel to "their one/most important game per year/cycle in the States") .
mexico in columbus honduras in kc jamaica NOT IN THE i-95 corridor, as every jamaican lives there....homedepot?? costa rica - utah ?? panama - houston
Just occurred to me... If I were an immigrant, living in the minority in my adopted country, and I had the chance to go to a game with people from my homeland coming from all directions to meet for a giant party, the biggest party of the year... Hell, yeah, I'd travel. I'm guessing the social angle is as much a draw as the sporting one.
HOLD EVERYTHING. There seems to be a bizarre assumption going around in this thread that we need to care about where we play Costa Rica, based on the possibility of support from Costa Rican immigrants. Let's look at the data. From http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/charts/MPIDataHub-Region-birth-1960.xls we find the following data for foreign-born population in the USA in 2010 by country of birth (for the five other hex nations and selected points of comparison): Mexico 11,711,103 El Salvador 1,214,049 Guatemala 830,824 Jamaica 659,771 Haiti 587,149 Honduras 522,581 Trinidad and Tobago 229,926 Panama 99,419 Costa Rica 81,933 So obviously we care quite a lot about where we play Mexico. Based on my sense of regional patterns of immigration, rather than any hard data at the moment, we also care where we play Jamaica and Honduras. But we don't much care where we play Panama or Costa Rica; they won't have a lot of support anywhere.
The worst thing you can do for growing your fanbase is have giant sections of empty seats, or have giant sections of opposing fans show up. Having 20,000 US supporters in a capacity stadium is much better than having a half full NFL stadium with 50% opposing fans if you are looking to generate interest in your product.
I'd be more worried about Panama than Jamaica. Jamaicans seem to see the football team as a secondary sport, and I've seen them twice in the US with hardly any support. Panama on the other hand had at least half of Raymond James filled during the Gold Cup.