Four years ago about 10 Quakes supporters made the trip to see the US win 2-0 at Crew Stadium against Mexico in the final round of WC qualifying. I'll be going as will some others, I'm sure. If anyone is interested, PM me and I can point you toward others who will be there in case you want to split the cost of a hotel or car, etc and how to get tickets. There are even some folks on the US Men Fans and travel board who are talking road trip. Although at $230 round trip a flight out of SFO is pretty cheap. There will probably never be a US/Mexico WC qualifier in our neighborhood, so this is about as close as it will ever get. A US/Mex match that really means something is an experience not to be missed.
Is this for real? Feb. 11th, Columbus Ohio???? I spent a very long COLD winter in Columbus Ohio in graduate school a long time ago, and I cannot imagine that anybody with half a brain would schedule a match in early-mid February in Columbus. Well, that's one way to assure an edge over the Mexico squad, I guess... Lou Sunnyvale
Right. If Mexico wants to give visiting teams a place to gasp in high altitude and puke out brown smog crap from their guts and lungs, then turnabout is fair play.
The cold weather is the US answer to the conditions in Mexico City. The USMNT will train in the cold weather, so the conditions, short of an ice storm or a blizzard, should not affect the US players too much. The hope is that the Mexican team will be miserable at best.
Obviously, I won't be able to be at that WCQ physically -- but here's hoping: one, I can get the day off from my day job to watch it, I normally don't miss a USA v Mexico match for anything and two, that ESPN Int'l airs it LIVE into the Asia-Pacific market.
As a heads-up, when you encounter any of these difficulties, feel free to hit the "report this post" button, or shoot a PM off to me or to billreeves. And we now return you to the pre-WCQ discussions.
Columbus has the worst winning percentage and the two lowest attendance draws of any US WCQ site this century. 22 out of 23 games on the east coast and the exception was a first round against Barbados. Is it just me or does anybody else feel like we're getting screwed here? DATE Score Opponent Attendance Location (Event) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2008 Nov 19 08 Guatemala Commerce City, CO, USA (WCQ’10) Oct 11 08 Cuba Washington, DC, USA (WCQ’10) Sep 10 08 Canada Bridgetown, IL, USA (WCQ’10) Jun 15 08 W 8-0 Barbados 11,476 Carson, CA, USA (WCQ’10) ========================================================================== 2005 Oct 12 05 W 2-0 Panama 9,192 Foxboro, MA, USA (WCQ’06) Sep 03 05 W 2-0 Mexico 24,685 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ’06) Aug 17 05 W 1-0 Trinidad & Tobago 25,488 East Hartford, CT, USA (WCQ’06) Jun 04 05 W 3-0 Costa Rica 40,586 Salt Lake City, UT, USA (WCQ’06) Mar 30 05 W 2-0 Guatemala 31,465 Birmingham, AL, USA (WCQ’06) ========================================================================== 2004 Nov 17 04 D 1-1 Jamaica 9,088 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ’06) Oct 13 04 W 6-0 Panama 19,793 Washington, DC, USA (WCQ’06) Sep 04 04 W 2-0 El Salvador 25,266 Foxboro, MA, USA (WCQ’06) Jun 13 04 W 3-0 Grenada 9,137 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ’06) ========================================================================== 2001 Oct 07 01 W 2-1 Jamaica 40,483 Foxboro, MA, USA (WCQ '02) Sep 01 01 L 2-3 Honduras 54,282 Washington, DC, USA (WCQ '02) Jun 20 01 W 2-0 Trinidad & Tobago 31,211 Foxboro, MA, USA (WCQ '02) Jun 07 01 D 0-0 Ecuador 12,572 Columbus, OH, USA Apr 25 01 W 1-0 Costa Rica 37,391 Kansas City, MO, USA (WCQ '02) Feb 28 01 W 2-0 Mexico 24,624 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ '02) ========================================================================== 2000 Oct 11 00 D 0-0 Costa Rica 24,330 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ '02) Sep 03 00 W 1-0 Guatemala 51,556 Washington, DC, USA (WCQ '02) Aug 16 00 W 7-0 Barbados 18,334 Foxboro, MA, USA (WCQ '02)
Yup, the west coast gets ignored on a regular basis. I guess they want us to be grateful when they do throw us a bone once every decade.
FIRST OFF NO BAD BLOOD HERE OR BIASED LOL I remeber the last game the US had vs mexico in Azteca, at half time, they showed the USMNT with oxygen masks!!!! I lawled for the longest time no matter who plays who, one team always has an excuse why they lost all fans do, mexican fans american brazillian italian peruvian, japanese german you name it haha!! one thing is for sure and we can all agree on... IT'S GONNA BE GOOD!!! CAN'T WAIT!!
First off, I'm sure there will be a WCQ somewhere on the west coast in 2009. Maybe even at the renovated Stanford Stadium. We'll wait and see. And as for Columbus Crew Stadium, it might not seem like a huge number of people there, but when you determine a percentage of capacity, that place seems to be packed for just about any big match that is staged there (not counting friendlies, of course).
That's not true. These two games were World Cup Qualifiers (Big Games) and the stadium wasn't even half full! These were probably the smallest crowd in the entire CONCACAF WCQ rounds -Embarrassing. Nov 17 04 D 1-1 Jamaica 9,088 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ’06) Jun 13 04 W 3-0 Grenada 9,137 Columbus, OH, USA (WCQ’06)
Last time was Easter Sunday 2005. Beautiful day and the air quality wasn't bad. Mid-week in August will be bad. My college team use to take oxygen with us whenever we played in LA.
No matter whether the air is good or not, that altitude is a killer. I remember very well my first weeks of basic at Ft. Carson, Colorado (altitude, 6,000 feet above sea level). I was 18, then, and was a pretty decent runner when I was in high school, but when you start running in that air without any acclimation, it feels like something is ripping your lungs out.
World Cup qualifiers are far more about results than about the number of people in the seats. Clearly, the national team's biggest rival is Mexico. The problem is that playing Mexico anywhere on the west coast is likely to resemble a Mexico home game in terms of the crowd. However, like I already said, it really isn't about the attendance. This game is played in Columbus because the hope is that the weather will be miserably cold. There is little doubt that the cold weather is a great advantage to the US, just as the altitude in Mexico City is a great advantage for Mexico. There are some who feel that this sort of gamesmanship is somehow unfair or otherwise undesirable. Personally, I don't have any problem with creating an uneven playing atmosphere....make the other team run uphill for the whole game...fine by me.
You're not entirely true, and I'm not entirely false. Mind you, as CCS officially seats 22,500 fans, the games against Mexico exceeded that official total, and CONCACAF WCQ'ing semifinal round (pre-Hex) games against certain opponents like Grenada and Jamaica are always going to be a hard sell to the public, regardless of the venue. And we're likely going to see another overflow crowd at CCS on February 11th again, as well. Which is not a bad thing.
It's bad that it's in Columbus ... AGAIN. And we could easily double CCS's 24K at Stanford. Hiding in the Columbus is Chicken Shit. Gulati is too afraid of Mexicans and is blowing his best opportunity to promote the American game and we don't get another shot at it for 4 years. We're 8-0-2 over the last 10 game with the Mexicans and we've only lost 2 WQCs to them over the last 75 years - the last loss was 1972 in LA. Playing in Columbus disrespects the game. The stadium is shut down for the winter for Christ sakes! There's a reason for that.
I am! I booked my flight over the weekend. Now I am just wondering when tickets to the game will go on sale.
90% of Mexico's starting XI plays in europe's chilling weather conditions to which they have already acclimated too, therefore the cold will not be a factor.