For those watching the World Cup the past couple weeks, many of the stadiums are quite familiar (sans sponsor names, of course). 11 of the 16 venues are in the United States, with all of the American venues currently home to NFL franchises: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles x2, Miami, New England, New York x2, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle.
As a fun fact, Michigan has played games in a few of these stadiums, including the Peach Bowl loss to Florida in Atlanta, a couple
season openers in Dallas, multiple Orange Bowls in Miami, and — of course — the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Houston.
How about the reverse? The Big House is not amongst the 11 U.S. World Cup locations, but it has hosted four different soccer matches over the past 12 years. All of these were preseason friendlies, with most involving some of the biggest brands in the entire sport. In honor of the current soccer craze, we briefly revisit these four fixtures.
2014: Manchester United 3-1 Real Madrid
Unsurprisingly when these two clubs share a pitch, but the inaugural soccer match at Michigan Stadium set the record for attendance in U.S. soccer history with a crowd over 109,000. An Ashley Young brace helped the English side win the contest, with Gareth Bale the lone goal scorer for Madrid; Cristiano Ronaldo was recovering from an injury, but he did make a cameo.
Hosting the biggest Premier League brand and the reigning Champions League winners was exactly the splash Michigan wanted to make. This is probably the greatest of the four friendlies in terms of prestige, with world-class talent filling both XIs.
2016: Real Madrid 3-2 Chelsea
Madrid returned to Ann Arbor a couple years later, again coming off a Champions League title — and on its way to win its second of three straight. Marcelo was the one with the brace this time, with Eden Hazard scoring twice late for the Blues, who came up just short of the win.
Chelsea was reeling from a horrendous domestic campaign that saw the 2014-15 champions fall all the way down to 10th place the following season. It was an immediate bounce back, however, as the London side would reclaim the crown in 2016-17, perhaps inspired by the friendly defeat to Madrid??
2018: Liverpool 4-1 Manchester United
It was an all-English affair in 2018, with the Premier League runner-up, Manchester United, taking on the Champions League runner-up, Liverpool. These historic rivals were both heading into the season with strong expectations, but it was the Reds who ended up meeting the task, falling a point short of Manchester City domestically, but winning the Champions League.
In terms of the match on campus, it was all Liverpool as well. A pair of penalties was enough for Liverpool, as four different players got on the scoresheet such as Sadio Mane and Daniel Sturridge. It was also a third-straight crowd of over 100,000 in the Big House.
2019: Barcelona 4-0 Napoli
The fourth and final European contest at Michigan Stadium was the second leg of something called the 2019 La Liga-Serie A Cup. Barcelona was the reigning La Liga champion and cruised to a 4-0 victory thanks to goals from superstars Luis Suarez (x2), Antoine Griezmann, and Ousmane Dembele.
Napoli is certainly the “smallest” brand to play at the Big House, but are far from obscure. The Italian side has won Serie A twice since its contest in Ann Arbor, and ended up winning the Coppa Italia in the season following this friendly.
