The Bethlehem Soccer Stadium is an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is t ...

stadium in Upper Bethlehem, St. Croix,

United States Virgin Islands The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an Territories of the United States, uninco ...

. The stadium is home to the

US Virgin Islands national football team The U.S. Virgin Islands national soccer team, nicknamed ''The Dashing Eagle'', is the national soccer team of the U.S. Virgin Islands and is controlled by the U.S. Virgin Islands Soccer Federation. History Though FIFA did not officially recog ...

while the larger complex also includes the offices and technical center of the

U.S. Virgin Islands Soccer Federation The U.S. Virgin Islands Soccer Association is the governing body of soccer in the United States Virgin Islands. The USVISA controls the US Virgin Islands Championship. The Federation was founded in 1987 and became affiliated with CONCACAF the same ...

. The stadium can accommodate 1,200 total seated spectators on two grandstands. It is the territory’s first

soccer specific stadium Soccer-specific stadium is a term used mainly in the United States and Canada to refer to a sports stadium either purpose-built or fundamentally redesigned for soccer and whose primary function is to host soccer matches, as opposed to a multi-p ...

and was funded fully by FIFA.

History

The transition of the

offices to Bethlehem Estate began with FIFA Goal Project funding in 2015. Construction of the technical center was scheduled to begin the following year and on the national stadium in 2017. The stadium was to be constructed to address a lack of footballing infrastructure and a proper

national stadium Many countries have a national sport stadium, which typically serves as the primary or exclusive home for one or more of a country's national representative sports teams. The term is most often used in reference to an association football stadiu ...

. The stadium was officially opened on August 11, 2019 with a ceremony that included guests such as FIFA President

Gianni Infantino Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino (; born 23 March 1970) is a Swiss football administrator with Italian citizenship and the current president of FIFA. He was elected President of FIFA during the 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress in February 2016. He ...

and

CONCACAF The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football,, ; french: Confédération de football d'Amérique du Nord, d'Amérique centrale et des Caraïbes, . Dutch uses the English name. abbreviated as CONCACAF ( ; types ...

President Victor Montagliani. However, the stadium was already in use as the USVI olympic team hosted its qualifying matches for the 2020 Summer Olympics the previous month. The stadium hosted the senior men's national team for the first time on September 5, 2019 for a

2019–20 CONCACAF Nations League C The 2019–20 CONCACAF Nations League C was the third and lowest division of the 2019–20 CONCACAF Nations League, 2019–20 edition of the CONCACAF Nations League, the inaugural season of the international Association football, football competit ...

match against the Cayman Islands.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bethlehem Soccer Stadium Soccer venues in the United States Virgin Islands