Cowboys Stadium Is A Horrible Place To Host Soccer

The Gold Cup semifinals will be held tomorrow at Cowboys Stadium, and if early photos are any indication, it's going to be an embarrassing shitshow for everyone involved. How bad? That photo is a pile of green sand to cover up the holes in the grass.

Reporters are there a day early, scoping out the joint. They don't like what they see.

The stadium normally has artificial turf, but for soccer they cart in giant strips of real grass. (After peeling off the turf.) It's not an ideal situation. Before a friendly last summer, Brazil's coach pointed this out gently.

“The pitch, obviously, it’s not really specific to soccer,” said Mano Menezes through a translator. “Placing grass for some events like here doesn’t make it perfect. The rolls that are placed, they have some grooves, and that can interfere with the trajectory of the ball."

In that case, the grass was laid down just three days before the match. But this summer's Cowboys Stadium event calendar looks pretty empty, so it's not as if Arlington hasn't had time to get the field into something resembling playability. Are we sure we could handle a World Cup next year if Brazil has to bail?

Oh, and there's a rumor that supporters won't be allowed to bring banners or drums to the matches. Have fun tomorrow, fans.

Update: A reader shared the list of prohibited items for tomorrow night.