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≡ 2028 FOOTBALL CITIES ≡
The long-awaited announcement of the 2028 Olympic football cities, for preliminary matches came on Tuesday, with six recently-built sites spread around the U.S.:
● Columbus, Ohio: ScottsMiracle-Gro Field (20,371) ~ opened 2021
● Nashville, Tennessee: Geodis Park (30,000) ~ opened 2022
● New York, New York: being built in Etihad Park (Queens: 25,000) ~ opening 2027
● San Diego, California: Snapdragon Stadium (35,000) ~ opened 2022
● San Jose, California: PayPal Park (18,000) ~ opened 2015
● St. Louis, Missouri: Energizer Park (22,243) ~ opened 2022
All six of these sites are or will be home fields for Major League Soccer teams and are sized accordingly.
All of the 2028 Olympic football matches for men and women will be played at these sites through 22 July, with the men’s and women’s semifinals at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on 24-25 July and the medal matches on 27-28-29 July.
The assignments of matches to pools and brackets – the teams are not known yet – will be made before LA28’s tickets sale opens in April. The actual team match-ups will not be known until the Olympic Draws in 2028. The football program includes 16 women’s teams for the first time and 12 men’s teams.
The spread of football matches across the U.S. for Olympic competitions follows a long-standing Olympic format, including for the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games, which had games at the Rose Bowl, at the old Stanford Stadium, Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland and Harvard Stadium in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For the Atlanta 1996 Games, football was played “locally” at Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia in Athens, but also in Birmingham, Alabama (Legion Field), Miami, Florida (Orange Bowl), Orlando, Florida (Citrus Bowl) and RFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C.
With these announcements, the only venue questions still left open are the routes for the cycling road races and time trials, the track & field marathons and walks and the triathlon. The cycling road races, marathons and triathlon will start at Venice Beach; the walks locations have not been disclosed yet.
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