The U.S. men’s national team now knows who will host its first pair of home World Cup Qualifiers in early 2022.
U.S. Soccer announced Wednesday that Columbus’ Lower.Com Field and Minnesota’s Allianz Field will host Concacaf qualifying matches against El Salvador and Honduras respectively on January 27 and February 2. The USMNT currently sits in second place in the octagonal round standings on 15 points through eight matches played.
“As we have seen throughout the qualifying process so far, great stadiums and great atmospheres provide a huge advantage to our team,” USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter said. “We’ve had fantastic experiences in Columbus and the Twin Cities and look forward to continuing our World Cup Qualifying campaign in front of our fans.”
Columbus has hosted 11 World Cup Qualifiers for the USMNT since 2000, in which the Americans have registered an 8-2-1 record. The USMNT recently played its first-ever match at Lower.com Field in October, fighting back to defeat Costa Rica 2-1 after an equalizing goal from Sergino Dest and an own goal from Ticos goalkeeper Leonel Moreira.
St. Paul’s Allianz Field will host its first-ever World Cup Qualifier for the Americans, after lasing hosting a 4-0 Gold Cup win over Guyana. The venue also hosted a pair of USWNT friendlies in 2019 before recently Vlatko Andonovski’s side played against the Korea Republic in October.
The USMNT will first take part in a December camp in Carson, California before hosting Bosnia-Herzegovina in a Dec. 18th friendly at Dignity Health Sports Park.
And playing at Tim Hortons in Hamilton vs Canada necessitates that your first game is played in colder temps. The European players should be fine in both the first two games. El Salvador won’t know how to handle temps in low 30’s. The game in Allianz will be difficult for both US and more so Honduras. Honduras and ES are both at the bottom of the Octagon al. I really don’t see the US walking away with anything less than 4 points from those 2. The game in Canada will be huge possibly for top seed from Concacrap. US needs to honestly walk away with 6 points from these 3 in order to take off as much pressure from the final 3. I would bet top dollar the final home qualifier versus Panama will be at Q2.
This is insane. Are we so afraid of El Salvador and Honduras that we’re trying to freeze them? Sheer idiocy. Weather is a great equalizer. We’ve just given Salvador and Honduras a good chance to take some points away.
I agree with the above comments. Weather is a two-edged sword. It could harm the USMNT chances of getting full points from these two matches.
Don’t like it. If we end up dropping points vs El Salvador or Honduras because the conditions were unplayable, it’s absurd. Sure I can see a way it works out beautifully, but why?
Yep, and that’s an advantage for the US against Central American teams!
St. Paul on February 2nd? I would expect the game time temperature to be around 15. But it could be much, much lower.
its a heated field, barring snow it should be playable
The field is heated. That is a huge plus in that it won’t be frozen as hard as concrete. But if the temperature is zero, or lower, it will be a nightmare to play in.
The record low for Feb. 2 in the Twin Cites is -32 in 1996. It certainly won’t be that cold for the game, but you could add dozens of degrees to that and still have a horrible scene.