Uruguay's Suarez Banned Four Months For Biting; FIFA: U.S.- Germany Match Will Go On Despite Rain
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, he's been suspended. Andy Scholes is here to tell us more.</s>ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: The FIFA won't buying that story, were they, Carol? They just announced he's been suspended for the rest of the World Cup, nine games in total, four months, he can't get on the soccer field and compete at all whether that be for his national team or his club team, expensive bite.</s>COSTELLO: Expensive bite. You're not kidding.</s>SCHOLES: This is the third time he's bitten someone and he still only got nine games. Some people were saying this should have been harsher. The most severe penalty would have been a two-year ban. This is still not, you know, as severe as it could have been for him.</s>COSTELLO: Why do you suppose they didn't issue the most severe ban if this is the third incident?</s>SCHOLES: I don't know, Carol. I'm not a soccer expert, but like the Uruguayans are saying after the game, soccer is an athletic game, not a game of morality.</s>COSTELLO: Let's talk about the rain falling in Brazil right now. We lost the signal because the weather is so bad where the game is being played. It is a downpour. Inches of rain have fallen. Some of the roads are washed out. FIFA came out and said, yes, the game will go on. It won't be postponed. The players will be on the field. You have to wonder if it's dangerous for the players.</s>SCHOLES: You know, the conditions can't be great in terms of playing soccer because we've seen already in this World Cup people pouring hamstring. Jozy Altidore pulled his hamstring and the conditions were perfect. They don't want to get hurt because if they tie 0-0 both teams move on and the important games are coming up. The next game is a knockout game, you have to win. No tying in the next round. Those players have that in the back of their mind and they're going to go out and not try to hurt themselves.</s>COSTELLO: OK, we have our signal back from Recife, Brazil. Lara Baldesarra is out there. So what's the weather like?</s>LARA BALDESARRA, CNN ANCHOR, WORLD SPORTS: Hi, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Did you hear me? It looks OK. I do hear you. It looks terrible out there.</s>BALDESARRA: It is. It's absolutely horrible out here. This rain does not want to stop. It is just a constant downpour. Now like you just said, FIFA has confirmed that this game will go ahead as planned. The big thing here, the reason, number one, the pitch must be five. If I go into the stadium to see it for myself, but to postpone this game would have meant postponing the Ghana/Portugal game, because both of these games have to be played at the exact same time so that there's no question of match fixing or anything like that. So the game will go ahead as planned. It remains to be seen whether a lot of fans will be turning up for this game because the roads are completely washed out, making travel to and from the stadium very, very difficult. But the biggest importance here is not the 40,000 or so people that are going to be in there, but all of the people that will be watching on TV. And, of course, that the World Cup stays on schedule. Nonetheless this game will go ahead as planned and it's going to be awfully interesting now considering the weather, Carol. This is just -- it's never ending here.</s>COSTELLO: So Lara, are all the players there?</s>BALDESARRA: They should have arrived a short time ago. We don't know if their transport has been delayed because of all of that flooding. I assume they will have left a lot earlier knowing what the weather was like, the conditions of the roads, so they should all be there now and in their locker rooms. And slowly they will be taking to the field over the next hour or so for their usual pregame warm-ups and then they have to go back in and dry off before heading back out on to the pitch for 1:00 p.m. local time here.</s>COSTELLO: That's just insane. OK, stay with me. I want to go to New York and Indra Petersons, our meteorologist, so talk about this rain and if it's going to go away any time soon.</s>INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I wish I had better news, Carol. You have to keep in mind, Recife is not a place used to seeing rain. I mean, 25, 30 days out of the month they typically get rain. What they don't see is what they're seeing this morning. They've seen 3 inches since midnight and some of the rain is so heavy, about an inch has fallen in just an hour. Current conditions already 73 degrees. That 100 percent humidity is out there and the concern, of course, is that flooding potential. They're already seeing it across the area. If this continues in this manner, they have the potential to see 20 percent of the month's rain in just one day. That day being today. That rain is expected to continue to fall even through game time today. Yes, they may get a little bit of a lull by tomorrow, hardly going to help the players out there. Everyone trying to get to the game, right. At the game time itself we still have about 70, 80 percent chance for more rain in the forecast, 79 degrees. Humidity will be way up there, about 79 percent. It's going to feel like 82 degrees, but again, Carol, it is all about this rain. This is something we saw in the beginning of the World Cup if you remember, just north of there. They saw about 5 inches of rain in one day. We saw what it did to that region, landslide, many people had trouble getting to the game and almost like Groundhog Day all over again.</s>COSTELLO: That's terrible. Let's head out to Chicago in Grant Park, George Howell is out there and he is awaiting the massive number of people expected to watch the game here in the United States, at least in Chicago. Hi, George.</s>GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, hi. Putting it into context, it's a foggy, cooler day here in Chicago and keep in mind it's sort of the beginning of the day, so people should be at work. A lot of people, though, will be leaving work, some people coming in from all over to be here. Look back here, no one's here yet obviously but they're expecting some 25,000 people. That will be the greatest number of fans to watch one of these games here in Chicago later today. We know that the doors, the gates here will open up here an hour before the game and look, I covered this just a few days ago as well. It's like a party atmosphere. People coming in from all over, everybody just trained in, tuned on that game to see what happens, win, lose or draw, you know, people are watching here in Chicago.</s>COSTELLO: All right, George Howell, thanks so much. We also have Joe Tolleson with us. He is a world soccer announcer. You've been involved in the game for a very long time. So I was talking with Andy earlier about, you know, with the players take the field, and the field is in not great conditions. They'll sort of like not really play and then they'll tie at 0-0 and both teams will go on. That seems so odd to me.</s>JOE TOLLESON, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, HOST OF SIRIUS XM FC CHANNEL: You know what, I don't know if it's quite going to play out that way. One, while the rain is horrific and some of the streets in Recife it is up to like a foot, about the top of some tires on cars and what not in different pictures that have come out of there, but these are brand new stadiums so the drainage has been terrific. Even in the games in Natal where it poured and poured all the players said the field was fine. I don't know if that will be a huge issue. I don't know that we're going to see this collusion we've been talked about because Jurgen Klinsmann is German and he is playing against the team he used to coach. The fact of the matter is, while it's a mathematical and probability, it's still a possibility that if Germany doesn't win this game or I should say if the U.S. beats Germany, the Germans could be out. I expect them to come out and play. They don't want to have any kind of cloud hanging over. They want to make sure they get through to the knockout round as well. What could be more important for the U.S. is what happens between Ghana and Portugal.</s>COSTELLO: So are you excited to see the game? I mean, of course, you are, because you're really --</s>TOLLESON: Sure.</s>COSTELLO: Of course, you are.</s>TOLLESON: That's what we do.</s>COSTELLO: I know, stupid question on my part.</s>TOLLESON: It's Sirius XM FC and we're soccer all the time and we're excited about this. The thing with it with Germany and the U.S. this is a great opportunity for the U.S. to take another step on the world stage. They came 20 seconds away from beating the fourth ranked team in the world and now they have a shot to go after the second ranked team in the world. They beat them a year ago in the U.S. Soccer Centennial celebration, although some will say that was a German B team. Still they got the victory and have confidence here. It should be exciting. It's a confident team. You talk to the players, they're ready to see what they can do against Germany and show the rest of the world that the U.S. has arrived on the world stage.</s>COSTELLO: All right, Joe Tolleson, thank you so much for enlightening us. I really appreciate it. I'll be back in a minute.