Baton Rouge’s first ever FIFA soccer match between Honduras and Barbados has been cancelled

Update:

Officials have announced the soccer match has been cancelled.

Original:

Baton Rouge will host a FIFA sanctioned soccer match for the first time in the city’s history between the national teams of Honduras and Barbados, said Mayor-President Sharron Weston Broome in a video appearing on Facebook and Instagram.

The match will kick off on Father’s Day, June 18 at 8:00 p.m. in BREC’s Olympia Stadium; doors open at 7:00 p.m.

Tickets are $80 at the door but can be purchased in advance for $70 at Los Alvarez Exxpress Latin Restaurant, at Prestige auto dealership and at a soccer tournament in Gardere Lane Park which is tomorrow. Tickets are not available online.

Semifinalists of the tournament tomorrow will play before the Honduras-Barbados game.

James Vilas, president of the Baton Rouge Capitals Soccer Foundation, said he was approached by a string connections with the Honduran team. He and the foundation partnered with the mayor, her staff and the Baton Rouge Soccer Club to make hosting the event possible.

Louisiana’s sizable Honduran community is likely why Baton Rouge was sought after as a location for the match, he said. He added that he’s happy to support this aspect of the Hispanic community. 

Vilas said the foundation has spent over $200,000 to put together the event, including the venue, security and paying the teams’ upfront costs. The city has offered to provide help with traffic control and its costs have been relatively minimal, he said.

“We are taking a big gamble to promote this and hopefully break even,” Vilas said.

He said he hopes in the future, an event like this will be proven to work and can be made a regularly occurring event. Marketing Sunday’s match has proven a challenge because of how long it took to finalize, Vilas said.

A lifelong member of the Baton Rouge soccer community, Vilas formed and owned what he called “a semi-professional team,” the Baton Rouge Capitals, for six years.

“We’re hopeful that in the future when we show that we can do things of this magnitude correctly, we can start entertaining second and third division professional teams,” Vilas said.

For the Honduran team, Vilas said, this is a stop before they reach the Golden Cup in Houston where mostly North American, Central American and Caribbean teams will compete.

The last game Honduras played was yesterday, where the team lost to Venezuela. Barbados last played on March 26, beating Antigua and Barbuda.

“We’re used to filling stadiums of over 100,000 people while supporting our local American football teams, like LSU and Southern University,” Broome said in the video. “But Baton Rouge knows soccer is the world’s game and we’re proud to be a part of it.”

The mayor also said she will perform the coin toss.