Tropical storm approaching. Short pitch. Silver lining? Cricket Oval kept fans 100 yards away from the team benches. So, bags of urine unable to land anywhere near team USA. Antigua & Barbuda were able to find Byers in a way in which we were incapable of finding Gomez. Gomez' two mis-touched balls to his feet entering box were unforgivable. Players had to adjust. Still, sh*tty field makes for sh*tty soccer. Short field with acres of space available is total gamesmanship and totally par for CONCACAF course.
no bags of urine in the Caribbean. Don't confuse the island people with Central America. Caribbean people are some of the nicest, most generous in the world! As far as I know the USA team has never had ANY trouble in the islands and the players usually comment on how well they were treated by the other team AND their fans.
In March 2008, FIFA set fixed dimensions for all international games to 105 x 68m, ie 75yrds wide. This was known as the Gleneagles agreement. Not sure what happened to that. I know FIFA grants lots of waivers, but it looked like there was room in Antigua for a 75 yard wide field. http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/ifab/media/news/newsid=707751/index.html
Fixed size for football pitch "Another decision at Gleneagles was to fix the size of a soccer field for men's international matches at 105 x 68 metres. [...] The Welsh Football Association proposed the change, arguing that size variation was an advantage for home teams, who could alter the size of the field against what the visiting team was used to." http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interna...ccer_field_size,_halts_technology_experiments
I should correct myself. It's not ALL international games. Just "A" games. "A" games are defined: Friday was an "A" game.
The first part of this post is unarguably rediculous. The Antiguans are more hospitable, more respectful, and better sportsman than the most US fans, the majority of this board, and especially the above poster. The very concept that the Antiguans would throw anything at all at the US players is so deeply rooted in ignorance it is unfathomable that a sentient human being expressed it. You folks sound so freakin whiney. You have no problem with Columbus in February or ANY OTHER decision USSF can make to give the US an advantage but cry like babies when a nation of 80,000 poor folk make decisions, within the rules, to help their ambitions. The SVR Cricket ground was the best they have. It handled the rain very well. I am just dumbfounded at the sniveling whining going on here.
I think the comment within the rules we have an issue with with the width of the field. I have no issue with the Cricket ground because they can choose any stadium and it is all they had. They could and chose not to make the width within the rules.
You still think the pitch was not regulation size? I don't. USSF officials and FIFA officials were there. The assumption that they all let the game go on a non-regulation field is one I cannot accept.
Not sure if anyone corrected you, but it would be 70 yards. The 10 yd strip is actually 11 yards from the corner. The corner arc is one yard.
I think that's what his program is saying that it was 10 when it should have been 11. Without starting with a known that can't be changed (taking half of 8 yards for the goal) this is interesting guesswork.
Good enough. I was just too lazy to read through the thread to see if someone corrected the original post.
I am glad you guys won, thus handing it to the man (in this case CONCACAF). It's obvious this is part of some bigger conspiracy to leave the US out of the hex.
That doesn't mean a whole lot... https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/the-sky-is-falling.1976441/page-2#post-26608115
The field we played on was as such because that is what they can afford. I am sure if they had a better stadium we would have played in it
Maybe. In 1984, we played a qualifier on a dirt field in the Netherlands Antilles. In 2004, the field in Grenada may not have been too bad before the deluge, but by halftime it was a swamp (one of the U.S. goals came when Donovan put a sitter into the net after the ball rolled to a stop in a puddle). That said, it was awful, although it may have been just as bad for Jamaica and Guatemala when they played in Antigua.