International Friendly Match

Saturday 8th October 2016

Kick off 17.00 Actual 17.39

Mexico 2 New Zealand 1,  attendance 40,287

29′ 1-0 G. dos Santos (pen)

46′ 1-1 M. Rojas

56′ 2-1 M. Fabian

@ Nissan Stadium

1, Titans Way

Nashville, TN 37213

Admission $48 + $9.95 fees, Print at home ticket.

No programme.

Nissan Stadium is home to Tennessee Titans of the N.F.L. as well as Tennessee State University Tigers American Football team. It was opened in 1999, as the Adelphia Coliseum, then named The Coliseum (2002-2006) and then LP Field up until 2015 when it took on its current name. Capacity here has increased very slightly from when it opened and currently seats 69,143.

I opted for flying into Nashville and doing an overnight stop, as this worked out cheaper than a day return, despite the extortionate hotel prices. Airport hotel was again the best option for accommodation. Despite this being a 25 minute drive to the city, it was easily done by catching the local bus into Downtown Nashville for a very reasonable $1.70 each way. The return bus, which has a stop across the road from the footbridge linking Downtown to the Stadium, passes here at twenty minutes past the hour, so very convenient, even though the match was very late kicking off, but that just seems to be what happens for matches involving Mexico, along with the usual problem of most of the crowd still having not learnt how to read, so once again we had the first half hour of the match looking like an attempt at the Guinness World Record for highest number of participants playing ‘musical chairs’.

I thought the crowd for this was very impressive. There can’t be too many countries in the world that could pull in 40,000 plus for a friendly versus New Zealand, let alone when hosting it in another country. Next up for New Zealand is a game versus U.S.A. on Tuesday. I’m not a betting man, but I think I can safely say that the crowd for that one will barely be a quarter of today’s turnout, especially as it is midweek. Good to see, that despite it being a friendly, there weren’t wholesale substitutions. Mexico only made three, on 61, 66 and 73 minutes, whilst New Zealand made six, two of which were in the final five minutes.

The following photos are poor quality due to camera malfunction.