Brazil and Egypt are set to meet at 6 p.m. Saturday at Huntington Bank Field, bringing an international soccer match to Cleveland for the first time. Andrea Yoch said the game is the city’s first event of its kind and told fans they can see Brazil and Egypt in Cleveland Saturday night.
The matchup is part of the Road to 26 series, and organizers expect about 60,000 fans to fill the stadium. The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission projects about $18 million in economic impact for the city, a draw that comes as Cleveland’s Pride Weekend celebrations are also expected to bring thousands of visitors downtown.
Yoch said Brazil is the No. 6-ranked team in the world right now, while Egypt has one of the best players in the world. She said both teams will be playing in the World Cup, which is part of why the game is being treated as more than a one-off exhibition, even if that is what it is on paper.
To make the field ready, crews installed a grass playing surface because international soccer requires a different setup than NFL games. The grass came from a farm in New Jersey on 28 refrigerated trucks, and more than 600 rolls of sod, each weighing about one ton, were laid across the field.
That transformation is also part of the strain the match brings with it. Drivers are being warned to expect road closures, parking restrictions and heavier-than-normal traffic throughout the weekend, and downtown businesses are bracing for the overlap of a major soccer crowd and Pride Weekend traffic.
The game is scheduled to go ahead Saturday night, but the bigger story may be what it leaves behind: a city trying to handle one of its biggest sports crowds while proving it can stage international soccer on a football field and pull it off in front of the world.
