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Didn't we just go through this?

David Harris at the Boston Business Journal tweets:

Boston makes short list of World Cup host cities

OK, not quite as bad as it sounds - Boston is part of the United 2026 bid, which would have games played in a series of venues across the US, Canada and Mexico. Still with Olympic-level kleptocracy, but not as rampantly soul-destroying as Boston 2024.

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Widett Circle would be a great place for a soccer stadium!

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Anyone remember 1994? Foxboro (the old Foxboro) hosted a handful of WC games and things went fine*.

It's basically a Patriots game, except with less obnoxious fans. I think we can handle that. Might want to have the T run several trains down since many people would be staying in the City and coming from out of town (but again, we can handle that … probably).

(* Okay, there was a minor scalping incident which wound up with a bunch of tickets hitting the market at the last minute so my dad and I went to buy tickets in cash at the game and wound up in the third row at midfield and boy did have to eat his words when he bragged about how good his seats were that fall in 5th grade.)

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Less obnoxious fans? Not all those guys are hookigans but I'm not sure you're on good ground claiming those guys are less obnoxious. Anyway, I think it'd be pretty good to go to a WC match if we could pull it off.

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To compare this to the olymipcs is asinine. They would have include huge infrastructure improvements, stadiums to be built, athlete villages, distruption in the city for week, etc. The World Cup would either be a foreign team posting up in foxboro for practice, or a handful of games in Foxboro. Seems like a no brainier if you could get it here.

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I think Adam's "soul-destroying" point is that FIFA is an international crime syndicate. They should all be in jail. Russia 2018! Qatar 2022! The World Cup is awesome, though.

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It's basically a Patriots game, except with less obnoxious fans.

And with a real sport. Real football.

Yeah it was just fine in 1994 with the old concrete crap stadium. I saw Italy play Spain it was awesome.

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I attended South Korea vs. Bolivia at the old stadium, had a great time, even if the match went scoreless.

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I've never seen a drunker crowd for any major sporting event than Pats fans at Gillette.

Buffett fans at the then-Tweeter Center were another bunch of soaks: I'd estimate about half of the lawn crowd was passed out by the time the band hit the stage. Not a big Buffett fan, but the girl I was dating at the time was. Glad I went. Corny, but fun.

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We are city of 'NO'

No Olympics, No Indy car, No Amazon, now No World Cup

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Other cities are just plain built better and can absorb large events with little detriment and much enjoyment.

Boston can't.

The roads are terrible and there's no professionalism about maintaining them, about keeping the traffic lights timed right, about not having a maze of one-way streets where there doesn't need to be one, and about building enough of them to keep up with overeall population size and economic activity. Because tradition. Because whatever.

The stadiums are all in the wrong place. The Garden is in a good place because its right one top of a train station (of course there's no north/south station link, so...). Fenway is near a greenline stop and one commuter rail stop, but both unless you live on the D line or the Worcester line, you've got to go in and then out again. Or drive, except there's no roads to get to Fenway without entering the roller derby. Foxboro is way too far out. Just about everywhere else the stadiums are all together or convenient to get to individually. Not here. Because reasons.

And lastly, the governance isn't there. There are no regional authorities to sponsor these sorts of events. It's either the city or the state, and no one in between. Mass is a small state, so it could be worse, but when you recall that the reason we don't have county government is that it was treated as a piggy bank for somebody's cousin, you see the problem.

Is there a solution? Sure, but you're not gonna like hearing it: get off your rear and run for office on a platform of competent governance for the benefit of all, not ideological bellyaching for the benefit of yourself and the bubblemates of your echo chamber.

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...and if there WAS a regional authority?

You'd be complaining about salary for a government-appointed commissioner and staff.

"The Massachusetts Sports and Exhibition Authority"

hmmm.... maybe they could just flip a coin between the already-existing MCCA and State Tourism Board.

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If Boston gets World cup, we will host four first round soccer games in Foxborough. Maybe a couple of more quarter finals or semi final games.

By your logic, we should also cancel all Pats games, Red Sox games and Celtics and Bruins games. In the meantime, let's also cancel Boston Marathon and the Head of Charles.

Folks, the roads are too crowded. At the same time, let's kick out Fidelity, Wayfair, GE, and every major evil corporations out of Boston. Let's also kick out Harvard, MIT, MGH and Brigham & Women's.

Let's make Boston into Detroit or Puerto Rico.

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Let's build some goddamn roads instead of bellyaching about
1. Bicycles
2. The Environment(TM)
3. Crypto-socialist sensibilities
4. Bicycles
5. Walkability and to hell with anyone who lives outside city limits
6. Overt socialist sensibilities
7. Cities Are For People(TM)
8. Bicycles

Every time there's a Red Sox game, just about every road in and out of the city is impassable. And I do mean in and out. Because between the lack of bridges across the pike and the Charles, and the rat's nest of one-way streets, and abysmally designed intersections and traffic lights, people going into the city for the game and people coming out of the city to go home clog up the roads for eachother, not themselves. Sometimes traffic going to two opposite destinations has to share lanes. It's not even third-world.

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Instead of just belly-aching about building more roads:
1) Where are you going to put more roads? Should we raze half of Cambridge like they wanted to do in the 70's? Have you been to any city in the midwest? With a few exceptions, they've all been seriously compromised by this kind of thinking. Check out St. Louis. Its been divided by three major highways into pie sections that make huge swaths uninhabitable, and there's still tons of traffic.

2) Even if you just "build more roads" you'll end up with more traffic and more cars and the same delays. Read basically any study on this. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

3) You've never been to a "third-world" city.

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How about that?

The fact is, Boston wasn't built for cars.

The fact is, cars are massive emitters of GHGs and destroying our planet.

The fact is, Boston is scaled for active transportation.

Go back to Indiana.

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Right, Boston was built for cows. That argument is old. All modern roadways were built for cars. I suppose you want to get rid on indoor plumbing because Boston was originally built without it? Or hey, lets get rid of gun laws because all the patriots who actually built Boston and who helped frame the Constitution all carried guns and wanted all Americans to have that same right. AMIRITE?

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roads were built for bicycles

19th century cyclists paved the way for modern motorists' roads
Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago

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Will there be full-time commuter rail service to and from the Gillette Stadium platform by then?

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Yes but it will breakdown in Dedham

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I welcome the World Cup because I watch soccer all the time, because the matches, involving the U.S. and otherwise, fill up the bars and restaurants, and because we have a facility in place to host. Very few people here actually care about open wheel auto racing, and the cockamamie scheme to have cars racing through the Seaport was doomed. As for the Olympics, they are an expensive monstrosity involving a bunch of sports that only matter once every four years.

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and I'd be fine with it happening again. Three times before, if you count the two Women's World Cups.

A more accurate headline would be "Foxborough makes list of World Cup cities", however. (Unless they want to use Harvard Stadium instead.)

Nothing to build, nothing to tear down afterwards. We can do this.

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once the promotions people started saying 'Foxborough?!? Where the h^!! is Foxborough?"

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It’s the home of the 5 time Super Bowl champions New England Patriots!

In other words, the venue is familiar to people.

Same thing with East Rutherford.

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Like Ron, I've been to a couple of them.

1994 Groups C and D played there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_FIFA_World_Cup#Venues

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Pasadena, Stanford, Pontiac, East Rutherford, Foxborough.

I want to say I saw Maradona’s last game, or the first game of the post Maradona era. Either way it was great fun.

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I knew about them but I did not attend them.

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Harvard even hosted soccer matches for the 1984 Olympics.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1984/8/7/olympic-soccer-thrills-harvar...

(Technically, Harvard Stadium's field is too small to host World Cup matches. There is a story somewhere about a doctored tape measure used to get the 1984 games...)

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can't.

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Is it just Gillette, or does it include Harvard Stadium (61K capacity), BC's Alumni Stadium (45K), Fenway Park (38K)? You'd think they'd want at least 30K capacity. Other college stadium capacities: Holy Cross 23K, UMass Amherst 17K, everyone else, 10K or smaller.

I like soccer, have never attended a World Cup match and would like a shot at experiencing one, but I need to know more. If it requires building a new facility, I will be much more skeptical.

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At a dozen different stadiums throughout North America, with a few games at Gillette only. It would be like hosting a round of March madness, just on a slightly larger scale.

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if that's all it is, that seems reasonable to me. The smallest recent World Cup venues were under 40K capacity, which would put Harvard, BC and Fenway in play.

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I know how to get around some other subscriber-only sites, but not that one.

I caught Celtic vs. Sporting CP at Fenway back in 2010 (1-1 in regulation, won by Celtic 6-5 the shootout.) Can they fit a FIFA-regulation pitch in there?

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reater Boston has made the short list of potential World Cup host cities for the 2026 event.

Gillette Stadium in Foxoboro, with a capacity of 65,892, is among a group of 32 sites selected by a joint North American bid committee to be presented to international soccer governing body FIFA early next year. The full list includes 25 U.S. cities, four in Canada and three in Mexico.

At least 12 locations will likely be selected to serve as host cities if the North American bid wins the right to host the 2026 World Cup. Other cities could serve as hosts for other Cup-related purposes, such as an international broadcast center, team base camps and hosting events like the final draw.

Also, Fenway can't fit a regulation size field.
Source: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/12444774/

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regulation soccer: the pitch looked small. Still an exciting place to watch a match.

With apologies for bragging, I've also seen Frozen Fenway college hockey, an NHL Winter Classic, and Big Air (with a sweet seat at the bottom of the ski ramp) there: all brilliant. Hockey especially feels different in the freezing outdoors -- I think it was the Bruins game that had a gentle snowshower in the middle of it -- with that nostalgic whiff of a thousand open-air amateur games. (My fond memories are mostly as a spectator: I was a sorry skater, only competitive at street and basement hockey.)

Also loved a Fenway Halloween showing of Ghostbusters (1984), which had hundreds of little kids in costumes, truly hilarious and charming. My favorite was the five-year-old in the very convincing (despite being cardboard-based) Transformers costume. He genuinely looked like an alien robot standing, then a bitchin' car when he flattened down on all fours: so happy and proud to repeatedly transform for one and all. I suspect Dad put about 20 hours into building it, all glue-in-the-hair and X-Acto nicks afterward: kudos.

Going to my first college football game there in a few weeks, can't wait.

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That snowshower at Fenway you mentioned took place during the game between BU and BC, one week after the Bruins-Flyers Winter Classic. It was fifteen degrees on a Friday night, with the students and bands behind each dugout, the snow under the lights, just awesome.

http://www.lussierphoto.com/wp-content/gallery/misc/rtl_010810-22-edit.jpg

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This is how World Cup soccer is done - multiple venues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_FIFA_World_Cup#Venues

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Never mind the fact that it's concrete steps that aren't exactly the lap of luxury, but it hasn't had anywhere near 61,000 seats since they unbuilt the northeast end of the U in the '50s, and it's listed at 30,000 today. It's probably too narrow, too.

Foxboro works fine.

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The luxury boxes are needed at these events now.

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for FIFA soccer, though it did host some Olympic soccer matches in 1984. Been to some football games there: not a lot of space on the sidelines. It was the home of the Boston Patriots for the 1970 season.

How did they go from 60K to 30K? Hard to imagine. They routinely draw 30K for the so-called The Game against Yale, which is a crushing attendance figure by Ivy standards.

Would love to have been to one of those in the 20s, when Harvard and Yale were leather-helmeted national football powerhouses -- the NFL was a rickety, déclassé sideshow in those days -- and they could pack the stands at the old capacity. Flappers and straw boaters, twenty-three skidoo!

Last time I went to The Game, probably 20 years ago -- no rooting interest in either team, still a pretty entertaining scene, if not great football -- you could still see ancient alumni fossils wandering around in tattered, 70-year-old raccoon coats. Wonder if that's still a thing.

If I had to guess, there are probably some dudes who aren't old enough to remember the Jazz Age firsthand but are still keeping the tradition going. That could be douchey in an era where fur is recognized as cruel, but if the coat is original vintage, like a family heirloom hand-me-down from Oliver Barrett V to Oliver Barrett VI, I'm sorta okay with it. Let the bluebloods have that, and the fancy seats at the Derby, and the secret pinky-twiddling handshake, but not the repeal of the estate tax.

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Even the pitch at Harvard is too narrow. It's not usable for international soccer.

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Out of curiosity - when they built the place in 2001-2002, they did make the field at Gillette big enough for World Cup Football, right?

I have some vague memory of now-gone Giants Stadium (built in the mid-70s, primarily an NFL/NCAA football field, but also some soccer and other rectangular-field sports) needing to get a waiver from some international body (FIFA, maybe?) in the mid-90s to have a World Cup early-round match or a friendly international or something. You couldn't fit a regulation pitch on the surface they had (at least, not without going right up to the wall)

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I remember that Stanford Stadium was too narrow, and the Silverdome was, well, a dome with artificial turf, so there had to be a waiver for that. The width at Gillette is yards smaller than the upper bound of width but 5 yards larger than the lower bound, making it as regulation as possible.

The artificial turf thing was a big hang up, and rightly so. That they allowed the Women's World Cup to be played on artificial turf in Canada was just wrong.

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worse injuries does plastic grass inflict?

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Most of the newer stadiums in the US were built to accommodate a soccer pitch. They have held a lot of international matches at Gillette, including matches for the special Copa America Centenario held in 2016. They had 5 matches at Foxboro on real turf that they brought in.

Shouldn't be a problem now... 1994 was a different era when it came to stadiums dealing with soccer.

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Thank you both.

There was less thought towards FIFA standards back in the 70s. The narrow field at Giants Stadium wasn't much of a concern to the Cosmos and the NASL.

The artificial surface, too. I think around the time of those Cup soccer matches there in the 90s was when they started experimenting with modular trays of grass as a playing surface. The Red Bulls got by with the dimensions - now they have their own stadium.

Giants Stadium was a great place to go to an event. Ironically, though I was there several times, I was never there for its primary mode (NFL football). I attended three Div I college football games, something like three soccer matches (one from Ted Turner's Friendship Cup, one... umm... probably Red Bulls, and I think the last was a Gaelic football match), one papal Mass, and one Springsteen concert. No Giants (or Jets) games.

Out of curiosity, I did a little playing with Google and measuring.
The Red Bulls arena marked area of play is about 220'x360' (overall surface is larger)
Giants Stadium's successor (MetLife) - the playing surface is plenty long, but only about 195' wide at the corners. There's some room to play around with it - you could mark out around 205'x360'
Gillette - the marked area of play for soccer is about 225'x345' (maybe a bit longer)

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