Trev Alberts likes setting records, and the Texas A&M athletic director has his eyes set on breaking another one in June: the Mexican men’s team’s largest attendance for a match played in the United States.
The previous record was 90,526 set in 2010 against New Zealand at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. A&M’s Kyle Field has the space to break that mark with an official capacity of 102,733. Game organizers said Wednesday that around 50,000 tickets have already been sold for the international exhibition on June 8 that serves as a precursor to this summer’s Copa America tournament.
“Kyle Field is a pretty special place, so if you’re going to do something on Kyle Field it’s got to be pretty special,” Alberts said.
Alberts joined former Mexican and Brazilian soccer stars Pavel Pardo and Emerson de Rosa, respectively, for a press conference inside Kyle Field on Wednesday morning to discuss the matchup. This is the 21st year of the MexTour, a five-city tour around America for the Mexican men’s national soccer team. The other games on the tour are slated for: May 31 against Bolivia at Soldier Field in Chicago; June 5 against Uruguay at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver; Sept. 7 against New Zealand at the Rose Bowl; and Sept. 10 against Canada at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
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The 2024 Copa America tournament will have 16 teams, including Mexico and the United States. Argentina is the reigning champion. Copa America is hosted by the South American soccer federation CONMEBOL and is played every four years.
“When you have exhibition game before the Copa America against Brazil, it’s good because you can test how is the team, how are the players and the coach can see how’s their performance,” Pardo said when discussing the Mexico-Brazil matchup. Since 1990, different North American and Asian teams have been invited to participate against the South American teams.
Alberts, who knows how to put on a big event after helping organize a 2023 University of Nebraska volleyball match that drew 92,003 fans for an all-time record attendance at a woman’s sporting event, recognized previous athletic department leadership for getting the game set up. The match was announced on March 12, one day before Alberts’ hiring was announced. He noted he’s a benefactor of that prior engagement, but has embraced what the game could bring to the community.
“When you think about Texas A&M, this is an international university,” Alberts said. “We have impact across the globe. We have a lot of international students, a lot of international student-athletes, so just really a remarkable opportunity for us to participate in this way.”
This will be the first soccer game and international event to be held at Kyle Field. Alberts said college athletic departments like A&M will have to shift their mindsets toward innovative ways to use an asset like Kyle Field more often. Easier said than done, though, as Alberts noted events such as the Mexico-Brazil game must align with the university calendar and other pieces.
“The fact that you’re going to do any events ‘outside the norm’ and then you’re going to do multiple ones is new for us, but I really don’t think that’s going to be outside the norm, not just here, but the rest of college athletics,” Alberts said. “We’ve got to think differently, we’ve got to think entrepreneurially.”
Later this month, Kyle Field’s playing surface will be altered to make a regulation-size soccer pitch with additional sod and grass being added along the track. The week of the match, fan festivals, player appearances and autograph sessions are scheduled. A game organizer said not only will there be fans that travel in from the respective teams’ countries, but also people from around 30 different states.
“That’s new, unique users of our space and hopefully we transition them to American football fans as well,” Alberts said.
Emerson and Pardo both had high marks for Kyle Field. The two former soccer stars took the field after the press conference and juggled a ball in the corner of the end zone. They were slated to eat lunch at the Dixie Chicken.
“I have been in different places around the world,” said Emerson, who speaks Portuguese, through a translator, “but this place is really special.”