Non-Derby County Matches
As one of the largest football grounds in the Midlands, Pride Park has also hosted some notable matches not connected to Derby County.
Pride Park has hosted one full England international; a 4–0 friendly victory over Mexico on 25 May 2001, when the national side toured the country during the building of the new Wembley Stadium. The match also holds the record for the highest attendance at the stadium: a full-house of 33,598.
The ground has hosted five England U21 matches. The first was on 9 February 1999, a friendly match against France, which ended in a 2–1 victory to England. The crowd of 32,865 was the highest to watch the U21 in England since 1983. The next two fixtures were both European Championship Qualifiers, with 30,155 seeing a 1–1 draw with Germany on 6 October 2000 and 32,418 saw a 1–0 victory over Holland on 13 November 2001. The U21's then played Holland U21s again four years later, on 8 February 2005, in a friendly, with a crowd of 33,184 seeing the home side lose 2–0. The most recent match was on 6 February 2007, when 28,295 saw a 2–2 friendly draw between England U21 and Spain U21, a match which was the first match under the tenure of current England U21 manager Stuart Pearce. Partly as a result of Derby's successful hosting of international U21 football, Pride Park was selected as a host venue as part of the English bid to host the 2013 European U21s Championship.
Away from the England national side, the stadium hosted a friendly between Brazil and Ukraine on 11 October 2010. The match ended in a 2–0 victory for Brazil, Daniel Alves and Pato scoring the goals, in front of a crowd of 13,088 live spectators and TV viewers in over 100 countries. Though Brazil coach Mano Menezes bemoaned the low turnout ("I expected more fans but I think it was a good game.") though Derby Chief Executive Tom Glick declared himself relatively pleased with the turnout, stating "I think everybody was hoping that we'd have a sold out crowd of over 30,000 but, realistically, time was working against us. We only had 13 days to sell the tickets and a big crowd just wasn't on the cards. But I think we've proven that we can turn it around, operationally. The promoter, Kentaro, has seen that. So we have done ourselves a favour in terms of bringing something else like this back again and we will continue to pursue things like this."
Away from international football, on 4 May 2009, Pride Park hosted the 39th FA Women's Cup Final, which saw Arsenal run out 2–1 victors over Sunderland to win the cup for a record fourth consecutive time, in front of a crowd of 23,291.
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Famous quotes containing the words county and/or matches:
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