Rose Bowl to Shrink for World Cup

In order to transform the Rose Bowl into a more soccer-friendly stadium, seating capacity for the 1994 World Cup will be reduced by as much as 10,000, organizing committee officials said Sunday.

Although some of those seats will be devoted to media and VIPs, an undetermined number will be removed to widen the field to meet specifications of the international soccer federation (FIFA).

Because that project is scheduled to be completed by Aug. 15, David Jacobs, Rose Bowl general manager, said seating capacity for UCLA’s 1993 football season and the 1994 Rose Bowl game also will be affected.

But he said that the seating capacity will return to its present 102,083 after the last of eight World Cup games, including the final, scheduled for the Rose Bowl between June 18 and July 17, 1994.

With the guarantee that the field will be widened, FIFA officials who inspected the Rose Bowl on the first day of a five-city U.S. tour said they were satisfied with the $11.5-million stadium renovation that was completed before the last football season at the city of Pasadena’s expense.

Before Sunday, FIFA President Joao Havelange of Brazil had not seen the Rose Bowl since the soccer final of the 1984 Summer Olympics. But one of his traveling companions, FIFA Vice President Guillermo Canedo of Mexico, expressed his approval as a spectator during the last Super Bowl.

“This visit, in a sense, was a formality,” said Alan Rothenberg, chairman of the organizing committee.

Of the other four stadiums on this tour, only RFK at Washington is as prepared as the Rose Bowl. Refurbishing of the Citrus Bowl at Orlando, Fla., began recently, but officials for Stanford Stadium at Palo Alto and Foxboro Stadium at Foxboro, Mass., are still in the planning stages. FIFA inspected the other five venues on a previous tour.