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Canada braces for Mexican invasion
If Mexico is able to score a win over Canada Sunday at Commonwealth Stadium, thousands and thousands of Mexican soccer fans will flock to the famed location to celebrate the ultimate moment in Mexican sport - qualifying for the World Cup.
Independance Monument near the Zona Rosa will be a mass of merry Mexicans.
"It'll be spontaneous,'' says Cecillia Quintanilla of the Mexico Football Federation, who arrived in advance of Bora Milutinovic's No. 9-ranked team which flew in here - just in time for our first feel of winter weather - late yesterday afternoon. "It's nothing that's ever organized. It just happens.''
The question is how many Mexican fans will be here to celebrate on site in the event of a Mexico win?
It's already a Mexican mini-invasion. But will it be a full-scale Mexican invasion?
"Right now we figure we've sold about 2,800 tickets to Mexican fans from various locations,'' says Gary Sampley of the pre-sale of 10,542 for the game which looked like it could draw 40,000 if Canada hadn't crapped out in this final round of qualifying.
"We're waiting on the possibility of as many as 2,300 more. One problem is that this situation didn't set itself up until the weekend with Mexico's 5-0 win over El Salvador and the U.S. tie with Jamaica. The biggest problem is that every available seat on planes flying into Edmonton this weekend is booked. They are trying to put together charters. But there's a big uncertainty now.''
FANS COME OUT OF NOWHERE
There's also the mentality of Latin American fans who just seem to materialize out of nowhere and show up at the stadium sans tickets.
"We had 300 fans from Costa Rica show up from nowhere for their game here in June,'' he said. "Four years ago in Toronto, for the Canada-Mexico World Cup qualifier, they had 19,000 fans and 12,000 of them were cheering for Mexico.''
Jumbo jets of fans from Mexico City showed up for that one and Mexican ex-patriots from most of the cities on the U.S. Eastern seaboard completed the crowd. That one featured a win-and-you're-in scenario for both Canada and Mexico. The loser, which turned out to be Canada, advanced to play a home-and-home series with Australia.
It was that Mexico game, with the majority of the crowd cheering for Mexico, that inspired the move of the Canadian team to Commonwealth Stadium. The Australian game here drew 27,775.
"The one thing we've always had here, which hasn't existed anywhere else in the country, is the majority of the crowd cheering for Canada,'' says Sampley.
"That's made Edmonton the favorite place to play for our players,'' he said of the team which has won only one game in the final qualifying round, but has lost only once at Commonwealth. "I'm a little concerned this time.''
Canada's final-round splat and the current weather have certainly killed the Canadian crowd. They might be hard pressed to match the 19,401 who watched the Mexico Under-23s play Canada in the Olympic qualifying tournament here last year.
And watching the game at home on television and proceeding in shirtsleeves to Independance Monument is likely going to look like a good idea to most Mexican fans checking out the weather map.
"We've been trying to organize the charters, but I don't think it's going to work,'' says Quintanilla. "There isn't the time between games, Canada is a long trip and our economy is not so good,'' she said. "And then there's the weather. I hope our players have brought warm clothes.''
HOME ADVANTAGE CANCELLED OUT
Canada intentionally scheduled this game for this weekend actually hoping for this kind of weather. After so many excruciating experiences in Azteca Stadium with the heat, the smog and the altitude - not to mention the 105,000 fans who watched Canada's 4-0 loss in the first leg in Mexico City this spring - the idea was to have our own unfair home-field advantage. But with Canada all but mathematically out of it now, everybody involved wishes they'd scheduled this game in August.
NEXT ROUNDS: Round of 16 || Quarter-finals || Semi-finals
GROUP A: Brazil, Morocco, Norway, Scotland
GROUP B: Austria, Cameroon, Chile, Italy
GROUP C: Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
GROUP D: Bulgaria, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain
GROUP E: Belgium, Holland, Mexico, South Korea
GROUP F: Germany, Iran, United States, Yugoslavia
GROUP G: Colombia, England, Romania, Tunisia
GROUP H: Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica, Japan