The Salt Lake City area has a professional soccer team (REAL Salt Lake) and so has a professional level stadium south of SLC in Sandy (Rio Tinto Stadium). Luckily for Susan and me, this allowed Salt Lake to be a host site for a US Men’s World Cup qualifying match on the road to Brazil in 2014. Although we aren’t big followers of professional soccer, an opportunity to catch an international match was too good to pass up.
We drove down mid-afternoon for the Tuesday night game and tailgated briefly about a block from the stadium. The US was taking on Honduras and the majority of the early arriving fans were Hondurans…an impressive following.
As we made our way to the stadium we passed a variety of exhibitions set up on the edges of the main parking lot and started to encounter more US fans. Utah soccer fans are just not big tailgaters (not surprising). Inside the stadium, the fans of both teams were blended so it was hard to get a real good idea of the split, especially since Honduras also uses blue and white, but I’d guess the US had a 2:1 fan advantage at least.
The game itself was great. Close throughout with the US coming away with a 1-0 victory on a goal midway through the 2nd half scored in the end zone directly in front of us. Despite the narrow margin, the US seemed to be in control most of the game. Watching this level of soccer in person was a lot of fun since there are chants going on in the stadium pretty much nonstop and you never sit down. Photo highlights below.
At first, the sun was right in our face.. but soon went down enough for some shade 
Pictures of the three of us 
Each game has a different (free) scarf with a different line of the National Anthem 
A couple shots of the game (including the winning goal!) 
Celebrating after the score 
Final score & Us right after the victory!
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