Will local law enforcement have the resources to support two sporting events at different venues in a day, and what are the implications of the schedule on lodging arrangements for the away team given all the out-of-town folks visiting for the World Cup?
Probably the issue of 100,000 people in a very small area at some point in time.
Ok. Maybe the Mariners and Seahawks have played on the same day in September and it was a disaster.
You gonna make me do it…
10/5 NFL played at 1:05PM, MLB at 5:03PM.
100,000+
That was it.
I think regular season games are generally not scheduled on the same day.
In short, I’m guessing that the NFL does not schedule SNF (or MNF or TNF) home games in KC, PHI, SEA and DAL during MLB Baseball Playoff Season (October, late September) due to proximity of the baseball fields. Even though MLB baseball playoff games can be scheduled earlier, they could go into extra innings with no end in sight. NFL regular season games have a more fixed limit, barring several serious injuries.
And the NFL will work around the already-published MLB schedule.
9/13 MLB away
9/20 MLB away
9/27 MLB home.
Thanks for the research.
So congestion was presumably not a problem. Guessing there might have been a lot of Seahawks fans who just walked over to the Mariners game afterwards so that reduces the total numbers. There is a lot of pedestrian space around those two stadiums but the transit station must have been packed.
I think they handle two games only when they are forced to.
Guessing that Cascadia Derbies are not scheduled same day as Mariner games. Others with the upper bowl closed might be.
It is possible that with enough notice, the NFL game could be pushed ahead an hour or so. Not sure if that would be more disruptive (complaints from those with tickets living in a cave) than actual people.
I was there for a Mariners game (attendance around 8,000) during a Team USA Friendly around 2014 and it was a bit of a disaster having that many people in that area. Bars and restaurants were overwhelmed and security would have a nightmare this time around.
If Italy can’t make it out of that bracket, they certainly don’t deserve to be at the WC.
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I am amazed that good teams like Denmark and Italy find themselves in this situation.
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If Kosovo can find a way to the WC when Serbia crashed out, that would be glorious.
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It’s partly because there are now so many teams competing in the Euro zone they decided to make smaller groups with just the winner advancing. In 1990 there were 32 Uefa nations competing. Now there are 54 competing for 16 slots.
Thought this article was decent:
Having read the article, I have even less sympathy for Italy not qualifying by now. Maybe they were just not as good as I thought or were not trying hard enough.
One of my fondest WC memories was the celebration in Toronto when Italy won the 1982 WC, huge party because of the large Italian population. Have always enjoyed the passion of Italy’s fans.
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Yeah, I have zero sympathy for them. They knew they had to win their group for an automatic qualification, or if not fight it out in a playoff.
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I’m trying to figure out where each of the intercontinental playoff matches will be held. I get that they are in Guadalajara and Monterrey, but I’m wondering which teams play where?
An ESPN article noted an advantage that Bolivia has playing at altitude. Only one of these cities (Guadalajara) is above a mile.
I assume, cuz reason, that one path will be in one of the cities, and that they won’t make fans of first-leg winners travel across Mexico to see the next match. Sure, there won’t be many fans at all for this (except possibly for Bolivia, maybe JAM and Suriname, both “close by”). Maybe FIFA doesn’t care about reason, seeing as it’s giving a Peace Prize to a warmonger.
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Doesn’t look to be announced yet.
With the current FIFA rankings, here are the number of slots compared to number of top-50 teams -
AFC 8.5 5
CAF 9.5 7
CONCACAF 6.5 5
CONMEBOL 6.25 7
OFC 1.25 0
UEFA 16 26
You could make a case that AFC and CAF lose a couple of slots each and boost UEFA by 4. I’m guessing they want to build up the game in Asia and Africa but it does seem a slight overkill. That being said, Asia and Africa are much bigger population-wise.
They’ve always intentionally capped UEFA. It’s a world cup, not the European Championships (plus there are more votes in Asia and Africa than Europe).
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It’s sort of like the annual NCAA argument “we’re the 10th best team in the best conference, so we deserve to be in over the #2 in some other conference or the #1 in some podunk conference”
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The article mentioned that only 3 of the 16 new slots went to UEFA, which is not proportional to the number in the top 50. Their representation has dropped from 41% to 33%, so I can understand feeling a little aggrieved.
It would still be a World Cup with a high European team count - lopsided representation hasn’t stopped MLB from claiming to hold the World Series.