The lower level platform at Secaucus Station was crowded and sweaty. Baffled supporters milled around. It was a multicultural kind of confusion, English, Spanish, Portuguese and French mutterings filling the air as the post-match haze settled. No one knew what train to get on, where it would come from, or how long it might take.
Hundreds were stuck in the summer heat.
The Club World Cup final had finished nearly 3 hours earlier, with Chelsea having dispatched PSG in the final of the expanded 32-team tournament in the U.S. What was left was a smattering those who had stayed behind, hoping to get a glimpse of a team bus.
The central problem: there wasn’t easy transportation back to New York City. From New Jersey. After a football match.
It was a red flag for what might happen next year. The United States is hosting the World Cup in less than 12 months, along with Canada and Mexico. And the Club World Cup, as a sort of beta test younger brother, was supposed to be a proof of concept that the country can cope with a global football tournament with global fans on a global scale.
The reality, less than a week after the end of the Club World Cup, has been mixed. The CWC proved that, in general, yes, there are ways in which the U.S. can handle large influxes of fans. But at a practical level, the specifics of hosting a global soccer tournament are still concerningly unattended. After a month of football in 11 cities and 12 venues across the U.S., there are some answers, but many, many more questions.