Due to the outbreak of SARS in China FIFA moved the Women's World Cup to another site and awarded China the 2007 WWC. Two of the countries interested in hosting the tournament are the US and Austrailia. If the US were to get the WWC how would this effect MLS. Would this be another step in the soccer becoming more mainstream? Will these World Cup crowds take away from people going to MLS matches?
With FIFA falling all over itself to please Australia, and since the US hosted the WWC last time, I doubt this will be an issue. But if it is, I think it will be great for MLS, since the game as played by MLS sides will seem as fast as the EPL by comparison.
Interesting (MLS might actually help stage WC) http://onesport.nzoom.com/sport_detail/0,1278,187543-2-27,00.html
[qote]Major League Soccer clubs were expected to make their stadiums available for the tournament. Source: Reuters [/quote] what all 2 of them?
The only ones that come to mind that don't have a college or pro football tenant this Sept and Oct (and aren't turf) are Columbus, RFK and Home Depot. Foxboro = NFL Giants = NFL x2 Chicago = Artifical Turf Dallas = Artifical Turf Kansas City = NFL Denver = NFL San Jose = College Football
Highly Doubtful that WWC in Australia this year It would be highly unlikely that the WWC would go to Australia this year since they are hosting the Rugby World Cup this September. I'd bank on it coming back to the US.
No chick soccer Womens WC should go anywhere, but at the U.S. The U.S. should not even be a candidate to host. Its seems unfair to the other teams that the mighty U.S. Women get a huge advantage again playing at home. Also, I think the WUSA league started too early.
I wonder if there isnt something else going on here? Is the world cup being moved to the US in order to give the wusa one last chance for survival? It kind of makes sense, they desperately need the publicity in the US.
The late September/early October time frame rules out most of the major stadiums that house NFL and college football teams. Somehow I don't see this WWC being played in small venues here.
Staduims Available: Crew Staduim (Columbus) RFK Staduim (Washington) Home Depot Staduim (LA) Cotton Bowl (Dallas) With little competetion for other events: Citrus Bowl (Orlando) UCF Football only Orange Bowl (Miami) UM Football only Rose Bowl (LA) UCLA Football Only Stanford Stadium/San Jose Staduim Stanford/San Jose State Football only That leave New York, New England, Colorado, Kansas City and Chicago. Each has NFL teams playing in their staduims. It is very doable. I just named 12 stadiums.
There also stadiums available in Houston, Birmingham, Seattle, and the other Miami stadium, Lockhart. That's 16 available. How many did the Japorea have?
There were 10 stadiums in Japan and 10 in Korea, I believe. That was for a 32 team tournament. Women's World Cup is a 16 team tournament. You're talking half as many games in the group phase (48-M vs. 24-W) and straight into quarterfinals (Round of 16 = 8 games). So instead of 64 games, you have 32 games - half as many. Furthermore, while the (men's) World Cup has every match as a stand-alone event, nearly every game in the 1999 Women's World Cup was a doubleheader of two WWC games. The only ones that weren't were the two semifinals, which were doubled-up with MLS games. That takes you from 64 individual times opening the doors down to 17 (if '99 format is repeated). In '99, eight stadiums were used, several for as few as 1 or 2 dates. China had planned to use four cities as host (I don't remember if one city had two venues for a total of five venues or if there were just four venues total). My expectation is that the U.S. would use 4-6 venues if they were to take over at this point. I think three of those are pretty much no-brainers - RFK, Columbus and Home Depot. I think they'd like to go to Spartan and Gillette, but availability is a problem due to the presense of both MLS and football tenants at those stadiums. They can move MLS dates, but college and pro football present bigger problems because they're pretty much fixed dates and the field conversion from football to soccer and back is a lengthier process than MLS to FIFA set-up. Gillette is a FIFA/World Cup sponsor, so I'm sure FIFA would push for games to be there, but you've got two Patriots games scheduled for there on 9/21 and 10/5, so availability sucks, even if MLS is willing to clear out their dates. I think it's pretty amazing that you could have a 2003 Women's World Cup in the U.S. and not play one game in a stadium that was used for the 1999 Women's World Cup in the U.S. The D.C. venue in '99 was Jack Kent Cooke (now FedEx) and Foxboro Stadium has been replaced by Gillette. Columbus Crew Stadium and the Home Depot Center did not exist. Spartan has potential to be a repeat, but I'm not sure it's a lock.
In the NY NJ area I think Rutgers stadium would be a great place. The stadium has hosted the US team to sellout crowds in the past and holds about 40-50K (?).