Michigan Stadium soccer match shooting for record crowd

Ann Arbor — Michigan Stadium holds the record for the largest crowd in the United States to watch a soccer match, and for the second time in three years will host a major international soccer event.
Records are meant to be broken, right?
Michigan Stadium will get a chance to make that attempt this summer.
Michigan will host Real Madrid and Chelsea in an International Champions Cup soccer match on July 30 at 3 p.m., it was confirmed Thursday morning at a news conference at Michigan’s Crisler Center. All of the games in the ICC series will be televised by ESPN or ESPN2.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for our community,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said Thursday. “We are excited. We are looking forward to a tremendous matchup and opportunity.
“It’s a unique crowd, it’s a great atmosphere even on TV, very energized, passionate — we love that. We have very passionate fans as well, so we understand that.”
Michigan Stadium hosted Real Madrid and Manchester United in an ICC match on Aug. 2, 2014 and attracted 109,318 fans, the largest crowd for a soccer match in the U.S.
Relevent Sports, the promoter of the international soccer series, is part of RSE Ventures, co-founded by Stephen Ross, a Michigan alum and major donor to the university and also the athletic department.
It was important for Ross to have a soccer presence again this summer at Michigan Stadium, and certainly organizers hope to set a new U.S. soccer attendance record.
“This is the biggest stadium we can possibly play in and we’ve put a matchup here that we expect to fill the stadium,” Charlie Stillitano, chairman of Relevent Sports, said Thursday. “These are two of the most storied teams in Europe now. These are two of the best teams on earth, two of the richest teams on earth.
“We wanted to bring one of the best matchups we have here to Michigan because if you have a lesser matchup you’re going to go to a smaller stadium and hope you fill that up. Mr. Ross said, ‘I want the biggest, best game we can possibly have at the University of Michigan.’ It’s important to him because it is a showcase to the world.”
Stillitano said photographs of a filled Michigan Stadium from the soccer match in 2014 appeared in publications across the world.
“I will tell you how crazy it gets — the paper in Spain doctored the picture to take out the red shirts and make them all white and the first thing the English press did was send around the actual photo,” he said. “What’s front page of every paper in the world? The University of Michigan and the stadium.”
Event organizers will cover the Michigan Stadium FieldTurf with a “geotech fabric” that protects the turf. A thick layer of sod will be placed on top of that.