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OT: Soccer thread

Can’t let this go by without mentioning... Andres Iniesta will play his final El Clasico on Sunday. There are rumours he will be given the Guard of Honour by both Barça and RM, in Madrid. Think about that for a second.

What a player, what a career. Such an intelligent player, his off the ball movement was flawless. He found and created space, and with all that skill it was amazing to watch. As the Brits say, he “ghosted” into then scoring areas. Fantastic to watch this guy play over the years, world soccer will be poorer as he leaves the stage.
 
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World cup 2026 is coming to north America.

Toronto is likely to host the opening game from what has been said so far
 
Hosting World Cup games in Toronto is going to require either a new stadium, or a pretty large expansion of BMO field, no?

30-36,000 definitely doesn't seem like an adequate maximum capacity.
 
I read that FIFA requires 45k+ to host games. Any truth to this? 7 years to upgrade BMO or build a new stadium? Maybe we get an NFL stadium? *cross fingers*
 
They are saying BMO is definitely the venue, for the record.

and it sounds like the plan for now is the increased seating will be temporary.
 
is BMO natural grass?

i know edmonton needs to put grass in but the stadium is plenty big enough

so 10 games in canada

montreal, edmonton, toronto all in the running but not guarantees more than 1 of them host

23 current cities with only 16 having games
 
just looking at the candidate stadiums and i have no clue how toronto can host with such a small venue

i think edmonton is the second smallest at 58k
 
They are saying BMO is definitely the venue, for the record.

and it sounds like the plan for now is the increased seating will be temporary.

Toronto will only host like 3-4 games, so it's not like you can justify an entire new stadium for that. Shouldn't be hard to throw in 10k temporary seats to get it to 40k, which is probably enough. Would be nice to get a stadium that could actually seat 50k+, but it's not like the city hosts enough tournaments to warrant the pricetag on that.
 
If Toronto was to either build a 50,000+ seat stadium or make modifications to BMO to get it up to that capacity (which I'm not even sure is possible given the footprint of the stadium), it'd either have to be heavily subsidized by tax dollars (which, hopefully, would be a complete non-starter), or it'd have to be folded in with a serious NFL bid and/or a new stadium for the Blue Jays.

I don't really see any of that happening though. More likely they find a way to temporarily push BMO up somewhere into the 40,000 seat range.
 
just looking at the candidate stadiums and i have no clue how toronto can host with such a small venue

i think edmonton is the second smallest at 58k

It would be by far the smallest venue, but I think you would just live with it and would presumably give it the least popular matchups. With 48 teams in the tournament, you've got a lot of games to fill. Pretty sure they'll plan it so that teams like Italy, the US, France, etc... get games in the larger stadiums, and Toronto will get like Panama vs Tunisia.
 
It would be by far the smallest venue, but I think you would just live with it and would presumably give it the least popular matchups. With 48 teams in the tournament, you've got a lot of games to fill. Pretty sure they'll plan it so that teams like Italy, the US, France, etc... get games in the larger stadiums, and Toronto will get like Panama vs Tunisia.

The current expectation from what I've read is that Canada will be given an automatic spot as a host nation, and I'd imagine the Canadian stadiums get the games from that group.
 
It would be by far the smallest venue, but I think you would just live with it and would presumably give it the least popular matchups. With 48 teams in the tournament, you've got a lot of games to fill. Pretty sure they'll plan it so that teams like Italy, the US, France, etc... get games in the larger stadiums, and Toronto will get like Panama vs Tunisia.

ya right
forgot they are expanding the number of teams as well

canada will get the D level countries
 
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