I’m confused. Does the Gold Cup not matter anymore? I don’t recognize 80% of the lineup they trotted out there tonight.
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They have been doing that on and off for a long time.
both Canada and USA played their A teams for the Nation League and their B/C teams for the Gold Cup.
No Women’s World Cup thread? It’s being hosted by Australia + NZ and kicks off at the unfortunate time of 3am ET next Thursday. The US’s opener is at 9pm ET on the Friday though.
Going to be well attended hopefully. The Australian team played a warmup friendly against France last night and they had over 50,000 people in. All the games in Adelaide where I live are already sold out, but the soccer stadium here only seats 15,000, so not surprising.
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I’ll be up. On the nightshift!
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Hyped! Aussie aussie kiwi!
The women’s game is good. Did they expand the field? Love it. The minnowest
Expanded from 16 in 2011 to 24 for 2015 and 2019 and now 32 for 2023.
There will be some absolute floggings in the group stage but the KO Stage should be very well fought.
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Draw rigged for NZ imo
Also, it’s a minor thing, but weird that there are 2 CONCACAF teams in the same group. That shouldn’t happen for anyone but UEFA.
Looks like NZ was having trouble selling tickets?
Should be a fun tournament tho
I think it’s because the interconfederation qualifiers hadn’t happened yet at the time of the draw.
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It’s just too far for everyone but AUS fans without the popularity of the mens world cup that can be held anywhere and still get enough fans to come.
Men’s World Cup in Australia would be incredible and added advantage of Winter, so temps would be more reasonable.
y’all getting your sleep schedules adjusted?
yeah, chosen peeps yaw
They’ve got to get awarded one eventually. Seems like a great option. Not a lot of great Southern Hemisphere spots. Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Australia are the best ones that come to mind. I guess there are some other S. American countries that could maybe pull it off. I’m not really up on the infrastructure and stadium situation of Paraguay, for example. Possibly some other African ones as well.
A combo bid from Chile/Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay is possible for 2030. It’s the 100th anniversary of the first WC in Uruguay, so you would think the bid has a shot.
2026 will obviously be hard to get tickets to since its in the US but i think even the men’s WC has a bunch of empty seats when held in places like Qatar and Russia. I think WC is kind of like March Madness where a bunch of people watch on tv but not many want to travel long distances to see in person.
I just did some reading about this and ticket sales overall are good (1.25 million sold vs 1.1 million total attendance at last WWC) but the problem is that they’re hosting 29 of the 64 games in NZ, which seems incredibly dumb. Australia has 5 times the population of NZ.
Russia and Qatar are pretty undesirable places to go on an extended trip though, especially for your average football fan. I think we’d get quite a few European fans making a trip of it. Pretty decent number of English fans travel when the cricket team tours here.
TV times are an issue though. To get the US womens first game on at 9pm Eastern it’s at 11am Eastern here. Late afternoon here is graveyard shift in the Americas and breakfast time in Europe.
NZ is having a hard time selling tickets to anything. Even the all blacks rugby barely sells out. It’s also weird they’re hosting 50% of the group stage games with less than 1/4 the population of Australia.
Edit: ponies by ChrisV
I got tickets to Brazil v Jamaica and Germany v Morocco. Pretty excited. Haven’t been to a soccer game in about fifteen years.
I’m wondering why Australia partnered with NZ, since I assume they were perfectly capable of hosting the tournament on their own.