An article over at FIFA World Cup talks about the edge US fans may have during the match against Italy today:

Thanks in large part to Ramstein Air Base, the nearby US military facility, Kaiserslautern is home to the second-largest community of Americans outside of the States with some 40,000 living in and around the city. Bruce Arena’s team were extremely well supported when they played a friendly against Poland at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion on 1 March and they will be hoping the fans will come out again for the match against Italy.

The US players regularly play in front of hostile crowds even on their own soil thanks to the many large ethnic communities spread all over the country who always show up in force whenever their native national teams come to visit.

This should mean that any kind of significant American support in Kaiserslautern will make the match feel like a home game for the Americans. Of course Italy, always well supported, expect several thousand fans of their own to come north for the match.

It all depends who has those tickets! It would be amazing to see a match in Germany where the US Fans were the dominant group or at least equitable to the opposing team’s fans. As previous articles have pointed out, the US fans have clearly learned what it means to be rambunctious soccer fans. Our team needs all the mojo it can get for this match against Italy and a huge group of US fans will definitely help!