For sure. However my point was more to experience with a palette, or tray system in growing grass inside an NFL stadium Both Atlanta and Jerry World have no proven experience growing an actual grass playing surface for their NFL teams. Our NRG and Texans have such experience. Getting the grass correct is EXTREMELY vital in honoring the sport. More so when hosting the World Cup in our nation.
It sucks, but I was expecting either N.Y or L.A. I will be happy just to get to see some games here. It is already 2024, hard to believe that it is so close.
Did anyone sit down to watch U.S.A. vs. Jamaica last night? For me and my buddies, sighting outside and posting up with cold beers, thinking it was going to be an enjoyable sporting event, boy howdy were we surprised. To unpack what went down last night is a Gordian knot but for us, we boiled it down to one core issue. Our players are very skilled professionals and play in leagues across Europe. They are talented individuals. Yet they struggle often to form what in military terms is called unit cohesion. Which in the beautiful game, unit cohesion will carry the day for a modest club or small nation, to punch above their weight. I think most of us cherish this about soccer. How this strange, old game, displays over and over that old saying of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For us that recall our Japorea 2002 team so fondly, that squad was talented yet very hard nosed and really ran off the ball for each other. Those guys went long on the underdog spirit that is so Americana in nature. We should get this same mindset from our current generation of players and boss our own backyard called CONCACAF.
I was at the games in JerryWorld. USA:Jamaica. Giant empty stadium. Players come out for a big game and find that nobody cares. I completely understand (not saying it is ok) that the players would find it deflating. Disappointing. There professionalism needs to dig down and find the internal motivation to get up for the game. But our guys are playing in sold out stadiums every week and are not used to doing it. I kinda understand. They were not ready to play. That is on them but I understand how it happens. Field was just crap. Rough. Ball bouncing around. Small — tiny even. Choppy game of defending throw-ins. All of that, and the early goal, tells me to change up your approach. Get urgent. Get after Jamaica. Press high. Play Direct. Attack fast. Be unrelentingly urgent until your goal comes. Instead — no urgency. Stuck with the game plan. Patience. Long possessions. Struggled to create chances against an organized big physical Jamaican defense who kept the play in front of them. USA don’t get urgent until 60’ when Berhalter completely overhauls the team going three at the back and Adam’s in the Pivot. I’ve seen this game before. Couva in 2017. But sometimes it’s better to be lucky. Jamaica should have won with a second goal but blew the sitter over the bar. Jamaican time wasting just invited the ref to keep adding ET, and a lucky pinball own-goal at the death. Just incredible. This team just doesn’t have a plan for breaking down a low block beyond the diagonal which is made almost impossible on a super freakishly narrow field. smh. Finally — I totally understand Panama kinda quitting. The second goal by Mexico was not ever close to being onside. The video I saw confirmed it — yet somehow VAR overturns the field and awards the goal? How can Panama think they would ever be allowed to win after that? Pure Concacrap.
Anyone of a certain age will remember foundly this man and his play at World Cup USA1994. Well, check this out! Football icon Romario, 58, registers as player in Brazil - ESPN
I was up in Dallas on a one-day work related visit when a colleague asked if I was going to stay over for the World Cup game. He said tickets would be easy to get for face value. I had not even imagined I could go to a game. I was watching every game on TV. (I still have video tapes of every game at Mexico '86). I bought a toothbrush and stayed over for the game. It was QF: Brasil 3:2 Netherlands. My two favorite teams in the whole world from my first days of being a fan 20 years earlier. Romario opens the scoring with an absolutely outrageous goal that developed and played out all right in front of me. I literally cried in wonderment. I never knew how incredible football at a packed stadium could be until that moment. To this day I can close my eyes and see that game.
Yessir! I like to think back to that Summer of '94 with all it's awesome events in sports, well and life for that matter. To think of how many Americans got bit with that lethal of all ills, many call the Beautiful Game. Once a person is hooked, there is not turning back now. In the book on life in a small Italian town called the Miracle at Castel di Sangro, the American writer has been recently bit by the soccer bug and has moved to said town to follow the town's club who has been recently promoted for Serie C to Serie B. He gets in with the townsfolk and goes to every game. He is informed by the locals that to witness an American who has a huge passion for the sport is like "a fan the twice over" since the person is just now realizing what they have been missing out on all their life and is on turbo mode for the Beautiful Game! HA!