News: Active discussions going for USA to host 2028 copa america

I like the part where Trump says it’s a short flight from the US to China.

This isn’t the politics forum, so I’m not going to add a comment about what that says about Trump’s dementia.

 

For a rocket.

 

One thing FIFA did get right with the World Cup is there was very little complaining about the fields outside of early complaining about MetLife (but I didn’t see any complaints about it from yesterday’s game specifically). Given how much complaining there was about the fields in the Copa two years ago something the organizers might want to try and replicate.

And overall the tournament was much better organized compared to the Copa America in 24.

 

Agreed it was much better but it wasn't our fault for 2024. CONMEBOL ran the whole thing they gave us < 18 months as host in terms of notice which is crazy. This is now happening again, 2 years out with no host announced. Euro 2028 hosts were announced in October of 2023.

It'll be another mess if CONMEBOL just announces US as the host super late and insists on running it themselves.

 

I was suspicious at the start of the Final about the fact that the referee was from his wife's native country. But after the game, I thought the referee was fair and did a good job.

 

Yeah obviously CONMEBOL‘a fault the tournament was so poorly run but hopefully they can take some lessons learned from this summer and do a better job next time around.

 

Besides the time factor I wonder how much money FIFA spent getting the grass right too. CONMEBOL isn't gonna want to spend as much if it's a fortune. Of course they could just use venues with natural grass in the first place.

 

Yeah but the venues with grass are mostly not the big NFL stadiums. I think the hope would be FIFA put so much money into figuring out how to do it that a lot of that investment won’t have to be replicated and it’d be cheaper just to recreate. But either way if you want people to not complain about the fields you have to actually put the work in on them.

Longer term I think the NFL PA is going to push on this point and maybe something that gets addressed in the next CBA where you start to see NFL fields moving towards grass as the standard.

 

I agree, we should have some leverage. Last time we had less leverage given we wanted to trial run for the World Cup and they were still upset about the economics (we destroyed them in the negotiation, shocker) for the 2016 Copa Centennario.

It'd be in both parties interest to just figure out a merge here across the board and CONMEBOL makes more money while having to do less operations, which they are clearly incompetent at.

 

Just a reminder, Copa America was organized primarily by CONMEBOL.

 

We know CONMEBOL is incompetent but do they know they are? That's the big question.

 

Wrong thread???

 

OTOH, CONMEBOL only has 10 federations to pay off. Infantino has 200+.

joking/not joking

 

I wonder if the players would trade that for the 18th game the owners so desperately want.

Quick technical question…how much different is it putting in and maintaining grass at an outdoor field like Seattle compared to a dome like Atlanta? Does anyone here know?

 

In one way, it was exactly like the 1994 World Cup: the outside group wanted to protect itself against the losses that would come from half full stadiums. In both cases, the Fed raked it in because the Fed bet on sellouts. The outside groups bet the other way.

They both learned their lesson for 2024 and 2026.

 

My ignorant assumption would be the main difference is you don't need the grow lamps, or maybe, not as much of them... But there's still all the infill, watering, and drainage.

 

That works for me!

 

There's a detailed article about it here which I read and subsequently forgot a lot about.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/science/world-cup-grass-pitch.html

 

Found an article specific to Seattle.

https://sports.yahoo.com/article/lumen-field-receive-upgrades-upcoming-152844152.html

I'm guessing they needed grow lights to cover the more shadowed portions of the field and maybe to just to have the grass grow in more quickly.

I don't think CONMEBOL is getting $19.4 million for Copa America, or spending it themselves.

 

That number is petty cash for the NFL.