Philadelphia confirmed as 2016 Copa América Centenario host venue

After months of waiting, Philadelphia has finally been confirmed as a host city for next summer's much-anticipated Copa América Centenario soccer tournament.

Lincoln Financial Field will be one of 10 venues across the United States for the event, which will feature the top national teams from across North, Central and South America. Games will be played between June 3 and 26. Each stadium will host multiple contests, according to tournament organizers, with most expected to host at least three.

So the odds are strong that Philadelphia will get a marquee matchup featuring the United States, Lionel Messi's Argentina, five-time World Cup champion Brazil, or other star-studded teams such as Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

"We're ecstatic for this city to have the opportunity to host some of biggest international games on the 2016 calendar," said Union executive vice president Dave Rowan, whose team worked with the Eagles and the Philadelphia Sports Congress to bring a piece of the event here.

The rest of the field includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and the winners of two forthcoming CONCACAF playoff series: Trinidad & Tobago vs. Haiti and Panama vs. Cuba.

Jamaica's presence in the field means that the Union will likely have representation in the tournament, as starting goalkeeper Andre Blake also backstops the Reggae Boyz. Many of the other teams involved also have players in Major League Soccer, from Costa Rica (Johan Venegas, Montréal Impact) to Paraguay (Nelson Valdez, Seattle Sounders) and even Brazil (Kaka, Orlando City).

MLS would likely schedule a break in its 2016 calendar, as it does during World Cup years, so that as many of its players as possible can participate in the tournament without harming their club teams. No official decision has been made yet, though.

The creation of the Copa América Centenario was originally announced last year, and the set of host venues was initially scheduled to be confirmed this past May. But that announcement was postponed when the FBI and Department of Justice unveiled their investigation into corruption in global soccer.

Included in the investigation's scope was the sale of marketing rights for the tournament, which was created as a special centennial edition of South America's biennial national team championship. Continental governing body CONMEBOL, which runs the Copa América, joined with North/Central American governing body CONCACAF to put together an event likely to bring soccer its biggest spotlight in the United States since the 1994 men's and 1999 women's World Cups.

Not surprisingly, given the many corrupt officials in both CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, the Centenario tournament quickly became a jackpot of greed, graft and bribery.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch's sweeping indictment unveiled in May laid out dramatic details of behind-the-scenes deals. Among the highlights: Datisa, a South American company which was created for the specific purpose of securing the tournament's global commercial rights, paid $110 million in bribes to a range of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF officials.

One of the investors in Datisa was Traffic Sports, a Brazilian-based company with a substantial U.S.-based operation. Its holdings include World Cup qualifying game television rights for almost every CONCACAF nation except the United States and Mexico, and an equity stake in the second-tier North American Soccer League.

When the U.S. government moved to charge officials at CONMEBOL, Traffic and other entities, the U.S. Soccer Federation began working to sever the event's ties to marketing agencies that helped enable that corruption.

In September, U.S. Soccer threatened to pull out of hosting the tournament if certain guarantees about cleaning up the event were not met. That included removing Datisa, whose United States assets were reportedly frozen by the federal government.

After a meeting in Mexico City involving high-level continental soccer and television executives, CONMEBOL announced in mid-October that it had officially ended its relationship with Datisa.

Later in the month, U.S. Soccer confirmed that the tournament would proceed, that it would be played in the United States, and that a new marketing agency would take over the commercial rights.

In addition to the Linc, the host venues are Chicago's Soldier Field; East Rutherford, N.J.'s MetLife Stadium; Glendale, Ariz.'s University of Phoenix Stadium; Houston's NRG Stadium; Orlando's Citrus Bowl; MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; Pasadena, Calif.'s Rose Bowl; Santa Clara, Calif.'s Levi's Stadium; and Seattle's CenturyLink Field.

All of the venues are home to NFL or major college football teams, with capacities in excess of 60,000 seats. That's no surprise, given what is expected to be huge demand for tickets. It is newsworthy, though, that eight of the 10 venues have artificial playing surfaces. As often happens when major soccer games are brought to such venues, temporary grass fields will be installed,

Ticket information will be released in the coming weeks on the tournament's website, CA2016.com. Union and Eagles season ticket-holders will have access to an exclusive pre-sale.