Atlanta United set all sorts of Major League Soccer attendance records in its second year in the league, from highest average attendance to biggest MLS Cup crowd. It was impressive to see more fans at the 2018 MLS Cup final in December than the Super Bowl at the same stadium two months later. But how does Atlanta stack up to the highest attended soccer matches in U.S. history?
FC Cincinnati has been playing its inaugural MLS season at Nippert Stadium and will do so for the next year or two. While it's not the prettiest stadium to play in, it’s still a stadium nonetheless.
A lot of new MLS teams have outlined their plans for a new soccer-specific stadium as they integrate into MLS, Austin being one and Inter Miami being another. Cinicinnati also outlined its plans for a downtown stadium and the initial plans looked very promising. Tuesday, FC Cincinnati and MLS revealed the final plans.
It's called The West End Stadium, and it's class.
Before MLS, the NASL was a popular competition in the United States, pulling in players like Pele, George Best and Johan Cruyff. NASL clubs mainly played in American football and baseball stadiums, and after the league went broke and MLS succeeded the NASL in the next decade, MLS clubs did not have stadiums of their own starting out.
On Tuesday, the suburb of Bridgeview and the Chicago Fire announced that the terms of their lease had been amended, meaning that the club will no longer play its matches in the village — more specifically, at SeatGeek Stadium — through the 2036 season, as the original lease dictated.
Last night, a meeting between Uruguay — eighth-ranked in the world and perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil’s Copa América quest on home soil — and Ecuador was dominated by La Celeste. First half goals from Luis Suárez, Edinson Cavani and Nicolás Lodeiro effectively decided the match, especially so since Ecuador was reduced to 10-men in the 24th minute following a José Quinteros red card.
The opening goal from Lodeiro in the sixth minute was excellent, featuring a pinpoint cross from Suárez and a three-touch masterpiece from the Seattle Sounders attacker.
If you build it, they will come. That comes as no surprise given the approximate season ticket waitlist of 13,000, but the Portland Timbers finally put on their 2019 home opener — 13 matches into the MLS season — in front of a sellout crowd of 25,218 at Providence Park on Saturday night.
The stadium, located in southwest Portland, underwent an $85 million expansion that added roughly 4,000 seats to the eastern side of the stadium, accounting for the Timbers’ historic 12-game road trip to begin the season.
On Sunday, Union Berlin (third place finisher in the 2. Bundesliga) upset VfB Stuttgart (16th place finisher in the Bundesliga) in the Relegation Playoffs to send the second division side into Germany’s top division for the first time in its 54-year history.
The final whistle was greeted with delirium inside Union’s home ground, the Alte Försterei. The club, which is located in the south east of Berlin, has a passionate fanbase and routinely draws 22,000 to its unique all-standing stadium.
Europe has a rich history of football and so too is the case with its stadiums. Sadly, the old and classic stadiums that we know and love are becoming outdated.
Real Madrid completed its penultimate home match of the season when recording a 3-2 victory over Villarreal on Sunday. With a Champions League spot already secure next year, los Blancos have nothing to play for, and that fact was mirrored in the stands at the Santiago Bernabéu.
We all know what it would mean to Liverpool if the club could capture its first league title since 1989-90, but something similar has gone down in Greece where PAOK has just been crowned Super League champions for the first time since 1984-85.
Based in Thessaloniki — the most populous city in Greece outside of Athens — PAOK had suffered heartbreak after heartbreak following that 1985 title, including finishing runners-up in both 2015-16 and 2017-18.