Alabama Ruled Out As World Cup Venue

USA Bid Committee has further trimmed the list of cities under consideration to host matches should the US win the bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. Twenty-seven cities made the cut as venues for the upcoming quadrennial event. Birmingham, Alabama was not one of those cities, however.

Despite the fact that Alabama will not host matches, Huntsville soccer fans still may be able to catch a match or two within a two hour drive. Nashville's LP Field is still in the running, and judging from the recent World Cup Qualifier held there last spring, Nashville has a pretty good chance to make the final cut.

"We will be working closely with officials from all 27 cities, stadiums and host committees over the next few months in our process of identifying the final list of cities that will be included in our bid book to FIFA in May 2010," said David Downs, the Executive Director of the USA Bid Committee. "The support of the individual cities and their capacity to promote the bid will be crucial to our efforts as we work to maintain the momentum created by the launch of our national campaign and our Web page, goUSAbid.com, last week. With the passion for the game being shown by our fans and the existing infrastructure in place in the U.S., we are confident we have assembled a list of candidate cities that will meet and exceed FIFA's requirements for hosting World Cup matches."

Regardless of the cities chose, the USA bid will need to be very strong to beat out other contending countries including Australia, England, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Russia.