When NJ Transit said this month that train tickets to MetLife Stadium for the World Cup would cost $150 — more than 10 times the normal price — fans were incensed. The news kicked off a battle between local officials and FIFA, soccer’s governing body, over who should pay for security and transit.
But as politicians sparred with the organizers, an alternative idea was taking shape online: Why, some European soccer fans wondered, couldn’t they simply walk to MetLife Stadium? Surely a stadium near New York City would welcome pedestrians.
“I know walking is an unfamiliar concept for most Americans, but it is a thing in the rest of the world,” read the original post on X on April 17.
Never mind that FIFA has prohibited pedestrian access, or that the scenic stroll could involve passing over interstates and trudging through the marshlands around the stadium where Jimmy Hoffa was once believed to be buried.
Even still, Jean P.D. Meijer, a 29-year-old Dutch design engineer who lives in Groningen, the Netherlands, doubled down on X, saying: “Do you really think football fans care? it will be like a zombie herd making their way through, you won’t be able to drive on those roads.”
In a phone interview, Meijer, who is not planning to attend the World Cup, said: “A lot of people were saying it’s completely impossible to walk there. It isn’t — not that it’s a good idea — but it kind of felt like this mentality of just giving up because you think it’s too hard.”
But, he clarified, “if I were going, I wouldn’t be walking.”
Though it was not clear whether those chiming in online would actually follow through once faced with the swamps, highways and motorists of New Jersey, Americans were quick to warn against walking to MetLife. Yes, it’s technically a walkable distance: several miles between Rutherford, N.J. (a close train station), and MetLife, depending on your route, and, for the athletically inclined, around 10 miles from Manhattan to MetLife. But a pedestrian route is at best daunting and perhaps impossible, people online argued. (A New York Times reporter tried in 2013.)
“That’s not a walkable five miles or 10 miles,” Tiesyn Harris, a 22-year-old social media creator from North Carolina who has visited New York, and whose TikTok video about the debate has been viewed more than 3.3 million times, said in an interview. “Imagine trying to walk on I-95, you know, one of the deadliest highways in America, or trying to walk through the Meadowlands, or walking through swamps or these toxic creeks that have high levels of mercury and all this stuff.”
As the online debate raged — seemingly stoked primarily by people not even planning to attend the event — the New York-New Jersey Host Committee was forced to weigh in, issuing a statement last week strongly discouraging fans from walking.
“These are active, high-traffic corridors where walking creates serious risks for both pedestrians and motorists,” the statement read.
Tony Vernal, a 48-year-old resident of Brooklyn, said that, despite the fare hike, he planned to take NJ Transit to attend the Norway-Senegal match with his 8-year-old son. “I’m kind of waiting to see if New Jersey backs down on this ridiculous $150 markup,” he said. “But with a kid, I’m just going to take the easiest option, which is the train.”
“There’s no way to walk to the stadium,” he added. “It’s like a death trap. What, you’re going to walk along the Pulaski Skyway? No, it’s just a bad idea.”
Still, Vernal said, he wouldn’t mind seeing some Europeans take their chances. “They’re welcome to try,” he said. “I encourage that kind of transgression.”
Whether it’s technically possible to walk to MetLife is perhaps beside the point. The debate fits within a larger trend of Americans and Europeans arguing on social media over cultural differences, real or imagined. They spar over sauna culture, hydration and how to hold utensils. Americans criticize Europeans for not investing in air conditioning, for smoking so much and for charging for restrooms. Europeans accuse Americans of talking too loudly, of making generalizations about Europe as a whole and, of course, of driving everywhere. The two groups even ponder the outcome of hypothetical physical altercations (Who would win a fight: 100 Britons or 100 Americans?).
Jamaal Burkmar, a British choreographer and content creator who posted a video on TikTok about the debate, said in an email that arguments pitting Europeans against Americans often sprang from a “growing tendency toward cultural defensiveness online.”
“Legitimate critiques — about cost, infrastructure and accessibility around a global event like the World Cup — get dismissed through a kind of blanket response to ‘those Europeans,’” he wrote.
He added: “I’ve traveled to a country in every continent, and I’ve never not struggled with public transport in the first day. Is it really that odd that Europeans didn’t know the route to the MetLife?”
