World Cup victory tour will bring USWNT to Orlando to face Brazil

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Danny Morales / Valencia Voice

The U.S. Women’s National team last played in Orlando in 2013 when they defeated Brazil 4-1 at the Citrus Bowl.

ORLANDO — The U.S. Women’s National team is going on a FIFA World Cup victory tour and one of those stops will be at the Orlando Citrus Bowl where on Sunday, Oct. 25 the Red, White & Blue will take on Brazil in an international friendly.

Fresh off of winning the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup the U.S. will take on rival Brazil for the fourth time in three years. The U.S. hold a 1-1-1 record during the previous three meetings.

The last time the USWNT played Brazil in a friendly was back in 2013 when the Yanks came away with a 4-1 victory in a match that was played at the Citrus Bowl prior to the stadium’s renovations. That game turned out to be the highest attended Women’s national game of 2013 with 20,274 fans announced in attendance.

“I expect that we are going to surpass 20,00 by at least two times,” said Orange County mayor Teresa Jacobs during a press conference to announce the game. “We know that we have the best fans in the world right here in Central Florida and when we bring these teams together we are going to rock the house.”

Orlando has often been considered the “Soccer capital of the Southeast” by Orlando City president Phil Rawlins as well as local politicians, as the city has the only MLS franchise currently in the Southeast. Now with the U.S. coming off of a World Cup winning year the expectation is to at least double the previous attendance number and sell at least 40,000 tickets to the game.

“We’ve got every gambit you can think of on the soccer world.” said Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer about Central Florida’s emergence as a soccer city.

The victory tour should see the U.S. bring some of their better players including Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Christen Press and potential Abby Wambach as she could be playing in her last few games for the Stars & Stripes.

“The victory tour it’s for the fans,” said former USWNT player and current UCF women’s soccer head coach Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak. “So they want to make everyone proud so believe me it will be very competitive.”

Orlando City SC have averaged over 30,000 fans during their inaugural MLS season and with the hype that the USWNT will bring following a summer in which they won it all it is expected that the 40,000 ticket goal is fully achievable.

With another major women’s soccer game coming back to Central Florida the discussion begins to shift to the question of if Orlando is a viable location for a new National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team to come to the city. This is something Orlando City president Phil Rawlins says they have declared interest in and is something they expect to do in the near future.

“We’ve made no secret of fact that we would like to bring a women’s professional team here,” said Rawlins of a potential women’s team coming to the area. “We continue to have dialogue with NWSL, we’ve not taken that to a point where we can make any announcements on it, but we certainly declared our interest.”

Tickets for the game will go on sale on August 21 at 10 a.m., while Orlando City season ticket holders will have an earlier opportunity to purchase tickets that will be sent to them via email.

The game is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 25 with a 3 p.m. kickoff. Orlando City is scheduled to play an away game later that night and Phil Rawlins was hesitant to commit to a watch party in the stadium following the game, but he did say they are talking about the idea.