In recent decades, there has always been some sort of World Cup dress rehearsal.
The Club World Cup, which starts on Saturday, takes it to an entirely new level.
There are important reasons to hold a World Cup dress rehearsal. In particular, a tournament held in a country like the United States where so many stadiums have artificial turf and will have to have temporary grass surfaces installed.
“From a purely operational point of view, this is a gift,” Heimo Schirgi, FIFA’s chief operations officer for the World Cup, told the Los Angeles Times. “Going into a World Cup without a test event is hard.”
For many years FIFA has organized its own competitions a year out from the World Cup. The first of five Confederations Cups serving as World Cup dress rehearsals took place in Japan and South Korea in 2001. In 2021, FIFA organized the Arab Cup with 32 games in Qatar, the 2022 World Cup host.
The 1994 World Cup, the first U.S.-hosted tournament, was different. It was basically a U.S. operation, organized by the team led by U.S. Soccer president Alan Rothenberg. In 1992 and 1993, the federation held the first two U.S. Cups, managed by Richard Groff.
The success of the 1994 World Cup pre-sale was an indicator of the hidden demand for soccer, but U.S. Cup ’93 underscored the ability of fans to show up for big games. The six matches featuring the USA, Brazil, England and Germany averaged almost 48,000 fans.
MLS commissioner Don Garber famously described America as “the ATM for the soccer world.”
That began when FIFA president Joao Havelange identified the United States as a potentially important market for FIFA and its commercial partners, backing the U.S. Soccer Federation to bid for the 1994 World Cup after seeing the soccer crowds at the 1984 Olympics. USA 1994 set records for the most-attended World Cup that still stand today: average attendance (68,991) and total attendance (3,587,538).
There’s a lot of truth to Garber’s statement, but it is also true that ATM machines have a limit on how much cash they will dispense.
Four comp tickets for every $20 student ticket purchased
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