Home Global Game CONCACAF Gold Cup schedule: Convenient sort-of “home” matches for Western Canadians

Gold Cup schedule: Convenient sort-of “home” matches for Western Canadians

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Twitter and the Internet have been ablaze with news of the Gold Cup schedule.

Canada will open the tournament with a match against Martinique July 7 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Then, July 11, Canada will get awfully close to the border when it faces Mexico in Seattle. The group stage will wrap when Canada will face Panama, the team that knocked it out of the last Gold Cup, in Denver on July 14.

Luckily for Canada, the game against Mexico takes place in Seattle, which offers Canadian fans the best chance to cross the border and see the match, as it’s a nice short jaunt from Vancouver. As well, Canada avoids playing Mexico in Los Angeles, a venue which basically gives El Tri a home game. As well, no team would want to face Mexico in the altitude in Denver, which would again be a major advantage for the team in green — as most of its players are accustomed to playing in the thinner air.

The Denver match is good for Canada as it will see our team facing a side that doesn’t normally play at altitude.

For Canadian fans, especially those in the West, it’s a convenient tournament. There are enough Canadian expats in Los Angeles to fill the Rose Bowl — if they all cared about cheering the soccer program, that is. As Douglas Coupland wrote in Souvenir of Canada, “Canada’s fourth-largest city is Los Angeles. More Canadians live there than in Ottawa or Calgary or Edmonton or Winnipeg or Quebec City.” It’s amazing how much Canadians, especially those Manitoba and West, treat going back and forth between Southern California and Canada as easily as we’d talk about a short road trip between Edmonton and Calgary. It’s not uncommon to hear chatter in a coffee shop in Vancouver or Edmonton or Calgary about Los Angeles traffic, and the best ways to handle it. Canadians talk about going to Disneyland or Legoland or Sea World in San Diego with the same kind of ease as heading to the cottage for the weekend. California, for some strange reason, speaks to Canadians maybe even more so than it does to, well, Americans.

Seattle is close to Vancouver and Gold Cup games that have been previously played there have featured healthy representations of Canadians fans. Since the Canadian men’s national team doesn’t play games outside of Toronto, this is a bit of justice served, a chance for fans out west to actually see their team play.

And Denver is a hub, so direct flights aren’t difficult to find. Heck, even Edmonton has a direct Denver flight.

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3 Comments

  1. Dave

    March 16, 2013 at 3:32 pm

    Just to further that comment on a local level. It amazes me that FCE has not thought to hold their training camp in Palm Springs, like they did in Casa Grande last year.
    There are almost as many Alberta licence plates driving around down here right now than there are of any other state in the union besides California.
    They would be guaranteed huge crowds at some very fine soccer facilities and it would help to put them in front of the hundreds if not thousands of Albertans (Edmontonians), including yours truly who make their winter home down here
    Incidentally, temps have been in the 20’s and 30’s (C) all of March.

    • Steven Sandor

      March 16, 2013 at 3:45 pm

      Dave, FCE chopped the Arizona training camp as part of the team’s budget-cuts package that was announced after the 2012 season. Training in Arizona represented a significant investment from owner Tom Fath. If the team can get 4,000 a game at Clarke Stadium this season, we will see if an Arizona camp returns next season. The team’s prep for 2013 has been almost exclusively indoor.

      • Dave

        March 16, 2013 at 4:44 pm

        I was aware of that, but why casa grande when Palm springs would clearly make more sense because of a much larger alberta population

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