Could high-level international soccer be headed back to Manaus?
That’s what the leaders of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics are hoping, with the games’ organizing committee adding on Thursday the Amazonian capital to a list of six cities planned to host Olympic soccer matches next year.
Located 1,800 miles from Rio in Brazil's rugged northwest, Manaus was made famous last summer when it hosted four World Cup matches at the Arena da Amazonia. One of those games, of course, was the US national team’s 2-2 Group G draw against Portugal, which saw Silvestre Varela finish off a Cristiano Ronaldo cross in the 94th minute to erase the Americans’ 2-1 advantage.
Manaus joins five cities – Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Salvador – already on the list as potential sites to host soccer matches at next year’s Olympics. It’s typical for Olympic soccer matches to be played far from the Olympic host city, with Glasgow, Scotland hosting matches 300 miles north of London in 2012 and Shanghai staging games over 700 miles south of Beijing in 2008.
FIFA will decide whether or not to approve Manaus as a site for the Olympic soccer tournament in March.
The men’s soccer tournament at the Olympics is essentially an Under-23 competition, with each team allowed to place three overage players on its roster. The women’s Olympic tournament is for full national teams.
CONCACAF will send two men’s and two women’s teams to the 2016 Olympics, with the qualification tournaments for both genders set for January 2016.
