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Texans, Raiders won't be able to breathe in Mexico City, ex-USMNT player says
As part of the NFL’s globalization of the game, the Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders will be playing Monday night’s game at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca.
Good luck breathing, said one athlete who has experienced playing in a sporting event there.
“Azteca Stadium is the worst place to ever play a sporting event,” former United States national team soccer star Eric Wynalda told USA Today.
That would appear to be a problem. Wynalda added: “You can’t breathe. The pollution is so bad that if you don’t have some form of rain that’s brought all that down you are going to be sucking wind.”
“They [will] break a record for how many oxygen masks they have on the sidelines,” he continued. “The combination of being that high up with pollution is just devastating to the body.”
This, strangely, was not part of the NFL’s promotional treatment when publicizing the game. And truthfully, we don’t know the record for oxygen masks, although we are checking back regularly with our stats department on that.
Look, the altitude is something the two teams will have to adjust to. At 7,380 feet above sea level, Azteca is more than 2,000 feet higher than Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High, which is the NFL’s highest venue. It’s like stacking the Arizona Cardinals’ University of Phoenix Stadium and the Atlanta Falcons’ Georgia Dome on top of Mile High (or something).
Anyway, it’s super high up in the air. And that might be a problem to a degree. But both teams have played in Denver — the Raiders every seasons since basically forever, and the Texans as recently as last month. Plus, the teams have taken advanced measures to try to simulate the conditions and prepare for them. Really, it’s going to be fine. No one is getting altitude sickness here, folks.
We hear these warnings in advance of every big sporting event outside the United States involving American athletes and we shudder in horror — think the Rio Olympics. But then the games happen. And nothing happens. (OK, so Ryan Lochte is not nothing, but that could have happened at any altitude, we argue.)
Wynalda, a TV analyst paid for his hot takes, has suggested that the USMNT’s struggles in Mexico City are altitude-related. Um, could it be, perhaps, that the team just struggles against better competition? Let’s check in on the status of coach Jurgen Klinsmann for more on that, shall we?
Point being: This is likely much ado about nothing and Wynalda — whom we like — just being a wee bit dramatic here. The game will go on, and it will continue to go on in Mexico, as the league clearly wants to make its footprint there again after staying away for more than a decade.
Hey, no one complained about the air quality when the league returned to Los Angeles! (rim shot)
Plus, there’s this subtle bonus: Research has suggested that concussions are far less likely at higher elevations, so there’s that. Then again, we’re going to assume that the NFL isn’t factoring this into its decision to go there.
But we are assuming that the game will go on and no additional pulmonologists will be required on site.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
