Some love to Utah for a great looking and sounding crowd today. Definitely earned repeat visits, in my book. RS
The United States was looking for a pro-home venue and they've found it. Playing at elevation with a hostile United States crowd will now be a daunting task for years to come. The only problem is playing at elevation might actually play in Mexico's favor. But the other teams are screwed.
Hostile in that it's United States fans. As you probably know, a lot of our qualifiers end up with more fans for the opponents than for the USMNT. My understanding is it wasn't that way in Salt Lake City.
The fans looked great. It was also nice to see so many fans in their Real Salt Lake jerseys or shirts. Salt Lake City and soccer are in the midst of a torrid love affair. Let's hope it lasts.
Kudos to Salt Lake City. Crowd looked great, and they sounded great too. They definitely deserve another qualifier the next time around.
JP and Marcello were going on near the end of the match about the local media coverage for the game. They were very impressed. Articles on the front page (and second and third pages) of the Salt Lake Tribune. A look at their website mirrors this. Surely this has a lot to do with the Utah Sports Commission and their support of this match and they should be commended. It just takes a bit of effort to get at least some of the local media in sync with an event like this. Then this creates a knock-on effect, with coverage generating publicity, making both local and traveling supporters feel more connected with the event, etc. We should see more of this in other host cities. SLC look to have made a good argument for hosting another match. I'm looking forward to hearing about how things went in the Sam's Army sections.
I saw on TV....MAYBE 2 Costa Rican flags. The rest were all red white and blue! It looked freakin awesome on TV! THAT is what a home crowd is supposed to look like! Well done SLC!
Yup...I was thinking the EXACT same thing during the game. The support for soccer there is just massive...a 25,000 SSS should do it.
Salt Lake will become a WCQ site agian in the future once they get a stadium. Right now its good but having to bring in sod will create future problems but that should all be solved by next world cup run when Réal gets it's stadium
That was the problem I saw also. But that was a fantastic crowd. Best home crowd I have ever seen for the US. I think RSL should try to build a stadium that could seat 25-30k, so it would become the national stadium (except for the mexico games which should be played in cbus).
Whoah whoah whoah. IT was a great crowd, pro-usa, but the people are still learning soccer culture. Hopefully this event will serve as a good starting point. But let's not go crowning SLC as the home for the national team. We are too big of a country to have a single national stadium.
I don't know, I'm sick and tired of being outnumbered by Hondurans and Guatemalans. You won't get any of that in SLC. Every major city would yield 50/50 crowd. Not in SLC. You could get away with playing in other places for the likes of Jamaica and T&T, but other teams will outnumber us.
The best match I have ever seen. Props to SLC.They were loud and very into it. I sat with the Loyalist and never stopped Chanting!!!!! Bring on another WCQ.
It was a great crowd and Salt Lake should be proud to have done such a good job with the event. The only real negative was the field--I've never been a fan of putting temporary sod over Field Turf. It always seems to make for a choppy game where players keep slipping and falling down. To my eyes, the turf isn't bonded to the ground and comes up too easily. Not only were the US and CR teams affected, but I noticed that it was just as bad in the RSL/ Dallas game. Either let's just play the games on Field Turf or start a fund to replace the stuff with some real grass.
USA vs Costa Rica June 04 2005 Rice-Eccles Stadium, Salt Lake City, Utah from ESPN2 broadcast 320x240 XviD First half: 9898 TPB Second half: 9898 TPB Please seed after you have finished downloading. Enjoy!
I've posted on this subject before, but just to reiterate - I think some people are misundertanding the reason why the US has friendly crowds against Costa Rica. It has relatively little to do with the choice of location, and a lot to do with the fact that there aren't very many Costa Ricans in the US. See these census estimates: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/foreign/ppl-145/tab03-4.pdf Remember, we also had overwhelmingly pro-US crowds for the hex games against Costa Rica in Kansas City in 2001 and in Portland in 1997. This isn't intended to take anything away from the Salt Lake City crowd, who looked great, and I'm sure sounded great too (watched the game in a bar with no sound).
Whatever the reason, it was a very full stadium and a pro-US crowd. Having been to 10 or so US games on the east cost from Boston to NY over the years, it was nice to see the red shirts and pro-US fans. I was in Birmingham for the Guat game, and while the US had more of the crowd it wasn't an overwhelming case of home support. I was at the USA-Hondo game at RFK (9-1-01) and it was an embarassment. Not DC's fault, just too many guys rooting for the other side. Same would happen in NY if we got more games, and has happened (to a lesser extent) in Boston as well. Bruce talked about the game in SLC being a chance to test that home advantage, and hopefully they've found it. If SLC can get that crowd repeatedly for US games, I'd be cool with that stadium getting the same number of games that RFK & Foxboro got over the last 4-6 years (which is a lot). Good job by the fans and organizers, and especially to those that travelled out to the game (I know guys from Jersey & DC that went out, so kudos to all that made the haul- wherever you came from).
Salt Lake City home of the national team from here to eternity seriously though, a great job. nice to see a sea of red jerseys. Great stuff.
Soccer being a game of emotions, mine started early, seeing the crowds of almost solely US supporters walking from the parking lots to the stadium. Huge props to Utah fans. Here, from the US Soccer piece about the match, is Arena on his Utah experience: “It was fantastic. I've never been in a more comfortable setting as the manager of the U.S. team,” said Bruce Arena about the state of Utah’s support of the U.S. team. “The whole week, Provo was brilliant, the people were great, everything was great there. Then, even today, I went to get a haircut and walking down the street, people were coming out of stores and saying, ‘Hello,’ wishing us good luck. I think the crowd was fantastic and I'm happy that our guys were able to respond. When things were tough, the crowd helped us. It was a perfect setting to play an important game in. I don't speak for U.S. Soccer, I speak for myself, but I'd love to come back here some day.”