The friendly that the Argentine soccer team will play this Tuesday at 11:50 p.m. against Costa Rica, in its second appearance on the first
FIFA
Date of 2024, will be played in a unique setting, the
Memorial Coliseum
in Los Angeles.
A stadium with a very particular architecture and a centuries-old life full of historical moments and with a very special meaning for the blue and white sport, which celebrated an unforgettable golden conquest there more than ninety years ago.
The venue, located next to the campus of the
University of Southern California
(the
Trojans
, that institution's American football team in the university league are local to the stadium), is the only sports venue that hosted two
Olympic Games
, those of 1932 and 1984;
and will receive the event for the third time in 2028. In that first edition, Juan
Carlos Zabala
won the first gold medal in Argentine and South American athletics.
On August 7, 1932, the young
"Ñandú Criollo"
signed one of the most notable performances by an Argentine athlete in the Games.
Him because he completed the 42.195 kilometers of the marathon in 2h31m36 and established a new Olympic record in the distance, in a race that was defined with the first four fighting for the medals already inside the stadium.
And because at 20 years and 301 days old, he became the youngest Olympic champion of that grueling test, a mark that no one has yet been able to take away from him.
The Coliseum was intended as a monument to pay tribute to Los Angeles veterans of the
First World War
, although since 1959 it has been dedicated to all the members of the United States armed forces who fought in that war.
Its construction began in December 1921 and ended in May 1923. And seven years later, it was renovated for the first time for the 1932 Games.
In that first modernization, the capacity was expanded from 75,000 to more than 100,000 spectators and the Olympic cauldron was erected, which was also used for the 1984 event and is usually lit on special occasions.
Even today it continues to adorn, along with the five rings, the central arch of the emblematic peristyle, a structure made up of 24 columns and six lateral arches on each side that rise at the east end of the stadium.
Juan Carlos Zabala, leading the platoon on the track of the Memorial Coliseum in the 1932 Games.
On these columns you can see 64 commemorative plaques dedicated to notable people or events, sporting or not, that had an impact on the history of the place.
In that
"Court of Honor
" have their space, for example,
Pierre de Coubertin,
founder of the Olympic Games of the Modern Era;
the American athlete
Jesse Owens
, winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin event;
Nelson Mandela
, who gave a speech there on his first visit to the United States in 1990 after he was freed;
John F. Kennedy
, who launched his bid for president there during the 1960 Democratic Convention;
and
Pope John Paul II
, after celebrating a mass there in 1987.
There are also plaques commemorating the 1984 Games, the
Dodgers
' 1959 MLB title
, and the Israeli team athletes who died in the terrorist attack at the
1972
Munich
Games .
For the second Olympic event held in that Californian city, the Olympic Gate
was built in front of the central arch
, consisting of a pair of nude life-size bronze statues of a male and female athlete on a structure of posts and lintels weighing nine thousand kilos. .
The first Super Bowl was played in 1967 at Memorial Coliseum.
Photo Instagram @lacoliseum
Declared
a National and California Historic Landmark
in 1984, it is also a place with a lot of history for American sports, as it helped initiate the migration of professional teams to the west coast of that country.
In its hundred years it was home to several important teams, such as the
NFL
Rams
(two periods between 1946 and 2019), the MLB
Dodgers (1958-1961);
and the Lakers (1960-1967) and
Clippers
(1984-1999) of the
NBA
.
It also hosted countless concerts (from
Michael Jackson
and
Madonna
to
U2
and
Pink Floyd
), cultural and political meetings and matches and duels of different disciplines.
The inaugural Super Bowl
was held on that field in 1967
, replacing the
Championships Game that year and since then defining the
NFL
champion each season
.
The
Green Bay Packers , winners of the National Football League, defeated the
Kansas City Chiefs
, who had won the American Football League,
35 to 1 , and lifted the first trophy in one of the most spectacular and marketing events in sport.
In March 2008, the Dodgers and the
Boston Red Sox
, two of MLB's biggest attractions, drew a crowd of 115,300 for an exhibition, which entered the
Guinness
Book of Baseball as the game with the largest number of spectators.
See this post on Instagram
A post shared from NASCAR (@nascar)
Since 2022, it has also hosted the
Busch Light Clash
, a non-scoring event in the Nascar
championship
, which brings together in early February the drivers who achieved pole positions in the previous season and the winners of previous editions of the race.
For that occasion, the stadium is converted into a 400-meter-long racing track.
Football also has its place in the history of the Coliseum.
The first duel of that sport was played in 1965 between
the United States
and
Mexico
, for the Qualifiers for the 1966 World Cup. Since then, the North American team played 22 matches in that stadium.
Although, curiously, it was the Mexican who played there the most times, with 86 appearances.
And the attendance record for a soccer match was set by two European teams,
Real Madrid
and
Manchester City
, which in July 2017 defined the
International Championship Cup
before 93,098 people.
Second day of work for the #Selection at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles.
📰 https://t.co/gVEtcNkhmr pic.twitter.com/qYZAfCFmDT
— 🇦🇷 Argentina National Team ⭐⭐⭐ (@Argentina) March 25, 2024
Today, more than 500 matches have already been played in a stadium that, after its last renovation in 2019, has a capacity of almost 78 thousand seats and which is also a special place for the Argentine national team.
The history of the successful "Scaloni Era"
began to be written at the Los Angeles Coliseum
.
There, the Albiceleste team played its first game with the Santa Fe player as coach (at that time, still interim).
It was on September 8, 2018, when the Argentines beat Guatemala 3-0, in the first friendly after the World Cup in Russia, and took the first step in the adventure that would end with the exciting consecration in
Qatar 2022
.
This Tuesday, they will return to that stage with so much history, so many memories and a couple of unforgettable moments for the light blue and white sport.