Seattle bids to get slice of World Cup action
Since we won’t know whether Seattle will host matches in the 2026 men’s World Cup until probably 2020, it’s a tad early to get lathered. What can be said with more certainty is if Seattle is one of the 10 chosen from a field of 17 competing U.S. cities, interested soccer fans should begin driving right away. They likely will make it by the opener.
Ah, we kid about Seattle’s traffic problems. Even Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was smiling.
“We’ll have faced all of our problems by 2026,” she said brightly. The guess is she was kidding too. These days, no one takes statements from politicians too seriously.
Really, Seattle’s mobility futility was scarcely an issue Wednesday among soccer fans, politicians and civic boosters who gathered at the Sounders’ event facility in Pioneer Square. Nor should it have been.
On the eve of start of the 2018 event in Russia, they talked up the possibility of getting a share of the winning action to host soccer’s quadrennial celebration. For a city without successful major professional soccer until 2009, and for a market of its size that hosts surprisingly few major national and international sports events, having a slice of the Cup would be a swift ascension to the adult table.
FIFA announced Wednesday morning that the combined bid by the U.S., Canada and Mexico won its membership vote 134-65 over Morocco, which might have been the greatest international mismatch since the Grand Duchy of Fenwick took on the U.S. in The Mouse That Roared.
The biggest selling point in the bid was the three nations all had existing facilities that would require no additional construction. That was a direct response to the rolling disaster in Qatar, the 2022 Cup host, where foreign workers have been abused and killed in the frenzy to build stadiums in the small Middle East kingdom.
https://www.heraldnet.com/sports/art-thiel-seattle-bids-to-get-slice-of-world-cup-action/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=b8dcc6a6da-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-b8dcc6a6da-228635337
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