Some European teams worry they will wilt. The United States considers cauldron-like climates a regular finishing touch, as if the Americans were a Baked Alaska flambé.
And if FIFA added a Road Warrior prize to the Golden Ball, Golden Glove and Golden Boot, the U.S. would be assured of taking home an award.
“When you talk about playing in the heat, the travel, it doesn’t bother us,” midfielder Michael Bradley said Tuesday. “And not only does it not bother us, it excites us to see that now the other teams are so worried about it.”
USA has the lengthiest first-round trek among the 32 teams at 8,800 aerial miles, chartering roundtrip flights from Sao Paulo to Manaus (1,680 each way), Natal (1,420 each way) and Recife (1,300).
That’s quite a contrast to four years ago, where the U.S. had the shortest group-stage travel in South Africa. To reach their games, the Americans took bus rides from Irene to Johannesburg (24 miles each way), Pretoria (11) and Rustenburg (62) for a total of 194 miles. They needed to pack a weekender only once during the first round, burrowing at their base hotel for the second and third matches.
This year they’ll change cities and climates repeatedly.
Accustomed to an August-through-May club schedule in Europe, where players use gloves and fans insulate in thermals, some soccer officials fret. No European nation has won a World Cup played in the Americas, where Brazil has taken three titles and Argentina and Uruguay two apiece.
Before the World Cup draw in December, England head coach Roy Hodgson called the Amazon rain forest city of Manaus “problematic” and said “you have a better chance if you get one of the venues where the climate is kinder.”
“It’s going to be incredibly humid and hot,” Germany head coach Joachim Loew said. “We must get used to it, in training and preparing.”
The U.S. will open Monday with a 4 p.m. match against Ghana in Natal. The AccuWeather forecast calls for a daytime high in the mid-80s, dropping into the 70s in the evening with a couple of showers possible.
The Americans next will play in Manaus for a 4 p.m. game against Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal on June 22. The extended forecast calls for temperatures in the high-80s that day.
The U.S. will complete group play against three-time champion Germany in an 11 a.m. match in Recife, a port city, where temperatures typically are in the low-80s.
While that might be unfamiliar for natives of Mannheim and Munich, it’s rather routine for the red, white and blue.
“I lived 4½ years in Houston, and that’s 100 degrees every single day with humidity plus, so if you can survive that, you can survive anything,” U.S. defender Geoff Cameron said.
Europeans complained about heat during the 1970 and ’86 World Cups in Mexico and were stunned by a heat wave in 1994 that turned matches into endurance tests at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Jurgen Klinsmann scored twice as defending champion Germany built a three-goal lead against South Korea, then held on for a 3-2 win.
Klinsmann, now the U.S. head coach, learned from that and the February 2013 opener in the final round of World Cup qualifying, when the Americans went to Central America and wilted during the second half of a 2-1 loss.
“Dallas at 120 degrees at 12 o’clock kickoff time … was an experience,” he said. “You want to make sure that you’re hydrated; you want to make sure that you’re not cramping up, similar to that experience in Honduras in San Pedro Sula.”
The U.S. players who are veterans of Major League Soccer are used to changing three time zones on coast-to-coast trips.
“That’s the hope, that now something that’s being talked about in a negative way with a lot of other teams is something that we can use to our advantage,” Bradley said.
AP Sports Writer Janie McCauley contributed to this report.
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