Tbf everyone was doing blow in the 90’s. This isn’t very surprising

I imagine stadium capacity has a lot to do with it. Some college football stadiums here hold 100k+

largest was 94k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_FIFA_World_Cup#Venues

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it's not a long trip for South Americans. the Brazilians played at Stanford... it was nuts.. fans wore their colors 24/7.

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Carnival for about a month.

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It was 20 years ago today when Brazil took over downtown Los Gatos during the 1994 World Cup

https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/07/02/it-was-20-years-ago-today-when-brazil-took-over-downtown-los-gatos-during-the-1994-world-cup/

“The Fourth of July is when Brazil played the U.S., so we knew it would be a big day in Los Gatos,” Attaway said. “We knew we didn’t have enough police to handle the anticipated crowds, so the police chief called in mutual assistance in advance. There were officers on every street entering Santa Cruz Avenue.”
“They were a calming influence,” Attaway’s wife, Sara LaBerge, said. “There was so much traffic that people were parking on the edge of south 17 and walking into town to party.”
All of this served to put Los Gatos on the world map. “I was interviewed by the New York Times,” Attaway said.
LaBerge added, “Every publication in Brazil mentioned Los Gatos.”
They have a carton filled with old newspaper clippings proving that point.
The Los Gatos Weekly-Times, for instance, reported that 3,000 people were rocking downtown after Brazil defeated Russia on June 20, and a June 25 photo shows people dancing on N. Santa Cruz at 1 a.m.

That was the 80s. We were on heroin in the 90s.

And yet, Americans continue to confuse "football" with "handmelon"...

Absolutely. Your country is huge, and so there are plenty of big stadiums. 8 of your 9 stadiums that hosted tournament games had a capacity of 60k+ in 1994. In contrast, the 2006 world cup in Germany had 3 of 11 in that size, 2014's world cup had 4 out of 12 and so on.

I was there at Stanford for the Brazil-Cameroon match. My boss had given me tickets just a few days before. It was an amazing experience. Most seemed to be Brazil fans and no one ever sat down during the match.

There were 2.2 billion fewer potential attendees in 1994 too.

We still are, but we were too.

Thanks Mitch.

If you've never visited Los Gatos, imagining that many people in a town that looks like your everyday middle america main street town, is just mind blowing.

Heroin was 70s. Blow was in vouge in the 80s but by the 90s it was either crack or meth.