SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WTHR) — In preparation for our live Chuck’s Big Adventure broadcast from South Bend, our team stopped at the University Of Notre Dame. With most undergrads home for the summer, one would think the campus would be quiet but that’s anything but the case!Friday night, the storied Notre Dame Stadium hosts its first ever competitive soccer match when Liverpool FC from the Premier League hosts Germany’s Borussia Dortmund.
I’m thinking this will be a historic night for soccer in Indiana. I was privileged to attend the Chelsea FC-Inter Milan match in 2013 when 41,983 fans watched at Lucas Oil Stadium. With Notre Dame Stadium’s capacity of 77,000 that mark should be broken. By the way, Liverpool has a huge number of American fans. They came in second place in the Premier League and drew 101,000 fans at Michigan Stadium last year ( I was in that crowd too). The bad news for me, and Liverpool fans, is that superstar Mo Salah won’t play.
A couple of interesting notes:
Steve, a member of the Liverpool TV crew asked me what the temperature would be at the start of the match. I said 90 degrees and he just shook his head.
Also, photographer Steve Rhodes and I watched crews take some of the 24 semi truckloads of sod into the stadium to cover the Irish’s artificial turf. A worker told us it would take 100,000 square feet of sod to do the job. Crews did the same thing in Indy six years ago.
At the Notre Dame bookstore, the shirts and scarves are on display as Indiana soccer history is made Friday night. Pretty exciting for this soccer fan!
