Chris Seitz is on the bench as the Union plays Ecuador to a 1-1 draw on Tuesday in a closed door scrimmage. Brad Knighton and Brian Perk each got a half in goal. Even if its star players were not released from their European clubs because the North American tour was not a FIFA endorsed event, the Union can take pride in the fact that Ecuador was just one point away from qualifying for the 2010 World Cup and played Mexico to a 0-0 draw on Friday. For more on the scrimmage, here are reports from the Union website, Philadelphia Inquirer, Goal.com, Philly Soccer News.
You can watch interviews and highlights from the scrimmage at the Union site. It’s not our fault you need Microsoft Silverlight, blame MLS.
The Bleacher Report has a nice profile of Philadelphia-born US soccer legend Walt Bahr.
Despite losing their first game of the season to St. Louis Athletica, the Independence stay second in Goal.com’s WPS power rankings.
Lori Lindsey is getting noticed.
Puma has a new clip featuring Independence forward Amy Rodriguez.
Visa credit card holders can take part in a presale to buy tickets for the MLS All-Star match against Manchester United. I’ve always heard that Houston is simply lovely as July turns into August.
Various recaps of the preliminary 30-man roster from the New York Times, USA Today, LA Times. Sports Illustrated gets the guessing game going with their picks for the final 23-man roster.
Charlie Davies’ dad talks about his son’s exclusion from the World Cup squad.
Ronaldinho, Totti, van Nistelrooy among those left off of their county’s rosters.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the fire at Bradford City’s Valley Parade stadium that claimed 56 people. Read this, and look at this, if you are unfamiliar. You ought to know.
Fulham play Atletico Madrid today in the Europa League final. You can watch the game live beginning at 2:30pm if you have DirecTV, or through, may I suggest, any number of questionably legal internet options. Otherwise, GolTV is showing the match on Thursday night at 8pm.
How do you fit 35,000 fans in an 18,500 SSS Stadium?
The owner can make the supporter section twice taller, and he can even add 5 rows of seats all around the stadium. But Somebody miscalculated the tremendous support of soccer in Philadelphia, it is only second to Seattle.
http://www.philadelphiaunion.com/Content1.aspx?cid=2.1
I agree that support for soccer in Philadelphia is huge. But after only one home game it is a little early to say that it is second only to Seattle, which I think has sold more than 30,000 season tickets in each of its two seasons of existence. I hope that we can again break the 30,000 barrier this Saturday – if we do so I would be more inclined to agree with you.
I think the Union is trying to do something like what the Phillies did with Citizen Bank Park. Could the Phillies sell more tickets than its capacity for many games, even without two World Series appearances in row? Sure. But wouldn’t you rather feel like every game is an event because the stadium is packed all the time rather than some of the time? It’s up to us to show that PPL Park needs to be expanded – nothing would make me happier than that. See you at the game on Saturday!
The 30,000 fans was hard to break since the Philadelphia union lost the last 4 games, but for the philadelphia fans to bring over 25,000 fans into the stadium with that bad record of 4 straight lost, is an indication that when they start winning more games, the 18,500 SSS PPL Park is going to be way overbook and they should already start looking for an expansion plan specially to the supporter section which could be twice a high and they can even built seat rows with steel support on top of the building behind the supporter section.
The best solution that I can see without altering the original design too much is to built an extension behind the supporter section similar to the one in Philadelphia Eagle stadium. Take a close look at the extension on top of the Pepsi sign in Philadelphia Eagle Stadium which could easily be added to the supported section of the PPL Park.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goosegoddesss/255730015/
That was a great suggestion to simply extend the supporter section by building extra row of seats similar to the one built in the Eagles stadium.
PS: Thank Jose and John for making this suggestion, if the PPL Park get full capacity for the rest of the season we might consider making this extension to our park, by looking at the Eagles stadium it make more sense to expand in the supporter section.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goosegoddesss/260287976/in/set-72157594390098372/
Philadelphia union is definitively the second strongest soccer city after Seattle, but because the newer SSS Stadium was NOT planned with sufficient seats to accommodate the great soccer fans of Philadelphia they will have to fall behind Toronto and LA Galaxy in attendance, due to the 18,500 seats limited capacity of the PPL Park. It is a pity that a lot of fans will have to fallow the soccer game by FSC , Telemundo or Fox. Take a look at the attendance of Soccer fans in Philadelphia which is only second to Seattle, and from now on they will be in fifth place due to poor planning.
http://www.mls-daily.com/2010/03/2010-mls-attendance.html
How did you not sell out the second game at PPL?