The 90-degree sun was making a mockery of my sunblock, as evidenced by the bright red hue of my hand (and face and neck and legs). Truck exhaust made the mid-afternoon air even more suffocating, doing my hydration woes no favors. I was about halfway into a 13-mile journey, almost exclusively by foot, from Penn Station in New York City to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, to see if walking to the World Cup was a cost-effective—and sane—transportation alternative for the area’s soccer fans on match day. After my editor bet that I’d spend the $98 cost of a game-day train ticket on food and drink, I packed plenty of water and other provisions to save money on the route. 

But at this point, my drinks were hot, my legs were getting heavy, and I had no choice but to slink into a North Jersey Dunkin’ to purchase two very large and oh-so-cold bottles of water and Gatorade. 

Chugging them left me refreshed, and still $80 ahead of the game! 

The near-$100 train fare from Penn Station to the suburban stadium hosting eight World Cup games, including the July 19 final, has neatly encapsulated the fundamental concern with the tournament, which will be hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and officially kicks off on June 11 in Mexico City: that it’s a ridiculously expensive affair. While the sticker shock of what is typically a $13 trip enraged the masses—the price was initially announced at $150 in April, before it got knocked down to 98 bucks in the face of public backlash—some observers, particularly those from Europe, scoffed at all the outrage. “I know walking is an unfamiliar concept for most Americans, but it is a thing in the rest of the world,” wrote one user on X, igniting a viral debate.

Were it not for a six-plus-hour trip, by ferry and foot, from midtown Manhattan to what is now known as New York New Jersey Stadium during the World Cup (FIFA does not allow stadium sponsors during the event), it would be a very fair point. Plus, some commentary has suggested that it’s technically impossible to walk from New York City to the World Cup stadium, given all the highways that surround the facility. But if walking was really unworkable, why was Apple Maps offering me a route? It wouldn't be the first time tech misled humans, but perhaps it knew what it was talking about. And while FIFA has clearly stated that walking to New York New Jersey Stadium is not allowed on game days, citing safety concerns, could you still get pretty close? Should walking to the World Cup, and potentially saving $98 and gaining the exercise benefits, really be prohibited? Is the trek as perilous as some have led us to believe? 

With these questions in mind, I set out little before noon from the New Jersey Transit waiting room at Penn Station in early June. (My oldest son, home from college, accompanied me.) The area was nearly empty, but still sweltering. If any air-conditioning was on, it wasn’t doing much. Picturing a few thousand more enthusiastic soccer nuts in this space, crowded together in the heat, was enough to quicken my stride to the Hudson. 

There, at 39th Street, a $10.75 ferry takes you across the river to Weehawken, N.J. The views above the Hudson—of the water, the New York City skyline, the George Washington Bridge—surely beat those in the train tunnel below it. 

Upon arrival in New Jersey, directions took us north along the river. New York New Jersey Stadium is actually just six miles, in a straight shot northwest, from Penn Station. But the swampy landscape around the stadium, the Meadowlands, acts as a pedestrian barrier. So we essentially had to circumnavigate the marsh, not to mention the roadways and railways and refineries and electric power plants, to reach our destination. Still, while that infrastructure, never easy on the eyes, is familiar to anyone who has flown into Newark airport, or driven on the New Jersey Turnpike, or watched the opening credits of The Sopranos, it’s not the North Jersey we met at the start of this soccer pilgrimage. Rather, for about two and half miles, we were walking through river towns, which are green and scenic.

As we turned inland, we saw more industry: body shops, gas stations, a place called the Jingle II Cocktail Lounge hawking steaks and burgers (it’s been closed for decades). But even in these less foot-friendly areas, the route is mostly sidewalked. In a few spots where there’s not a sidewalk, there’s a white line indicating where the road begins: we stayed as far to the right of it as we could and made sure there were no signs prohibiting pedestrian activity. While this was definitely the part of the voyage that required the most vigilance, it was relatively brief. On Apple Maps, a few water crossings—over Overpeck Creek and the Hackensack River—looked dicey. But both had walking paths.

Nearing four miles to go, we finally headed due south toward the stadium. At that point, however, the peanut butter sandwiches packed in my bag would no longer do; luckily, a restaurant in Little Ferry, N.J., advertised empanadas. With the end somewhat in sight, a treat was in order. Two beef empanadas and another pair of cold drinks: my total bill for the trip now clocked in at $28.75. 

Fueled for the stretch run, I reached the base of New York New Jersey Stadium at around 6:30 p.m. FIFA won’t let walkers get that close on game day, so if you do walk, you’ll have to get as close as possible, then perhaps Uber to the designated drop-off point at the Meadowlands race track, about a 25-minute walk to the stadium entrances.

My phone informed me I’d set a record for burning calories in a single day and exceeded 28,000 steps. I felt sore but accomplished. Sure, if I was attending a World Cup match that night, I’d be beat. But I’d have earned those beers.  

A group of eight American World Cup defenders locked hands in a circle on Wednesday morning at the U.S. men’s national soccer team training camp in Irvine, Calif. The players were participating in a warm-up drill; the circle inched forward as the Americans headed or kicked the ball to each other. The objective: don’t let the ball touch the ground before reaching a designated spot.  

Luckily for the United States, Chris Richards, the affable anchor for the U.S. defense who has missed all game action for the past three and a half weeks due to an ankle injury he suffered in a Premier League match in May, was part of the group. Displaying his signature Afro and smile, rather than any pain, Richards cheered his teammates on as they finished the routine, then led the soft sprint back to the starting point, where they all joined hands again and repeated the drill. 

“I’m ready,” says Richards, 26, the reigning U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year. 

Richards, who’s from Birmingham, Ala., has won a host of championships during his professional career, including the UEFA Conference League—two tiers below the Champions League—this season with Crystal Palace, plus an FA Cup, England’s annual countrywide knockout tournament, and a Community Shield, the game pitting the Premier League champ and the FA Cup winner against each other, with the Eagles in 2025. As a center back, Richards plays a sort of middle-linebacker role on defense, in charge of seeing the entire field and shouting directions at his fellow back-line players. “He manages the game well, he reads the game well,” says former U.S. World Cup defender Marcelo Balboa, the lead Major League Soccer (MLS) Spanish-language analyst for Apple TV. “He's a guy that can lay a tackle for you, he's a guy that can win a header between a group. He's also not afraid to go forward.”

Balboa predicts that Richards’ mere presence in Team USA’s Friday-night World Cup opener against Paraguay will instill belief. “You start thinking, ‘Oh crap, we’ve got all 11 players back,’” says Balboa. “That gives everybody a boost, because now you walk on the field and you're feeling very confident that at every position, you know you're ready to go.” 

Richards can also bring a little bit of levity to a pressure-packed situation. On the front line of the U.S. attack, the face of the team, forward Christian Pulisic, is admittedly a more intense introvert. He’s said that he will try to enjoy this World Cup experience more than the last one but knows his tendency to revert to form. While Richards will hold himself and his teammates accountable, he has a lighter touch. “When you look at him, he's overall just a positive guy, and that's what you want on your team,” says Balboa. 

Before the biggest game of his life, for example, Richards enjoyed playful interaction with an X account that has gone viral in the World Cup lead-up: a soccer fan purportedly from Germany discovering the finer points of American Southern culture, like Waffle House, Buc-ees and large college-football stadiums. Richards made a plug for Milo’s Hamburger’s, a regional chain based in Alabama. “If there’s any @milosburgershop near you please stop. Trust me,” Richards wrote to the fan. 

Richards has said he felt like an outsider playing soccer in the football hotbed of Alabama, especially as a young Black player. (His mother is white, and his father is Black.) “Kids that looked like me weren’t playing soccer,” he told reporters before his training session in Irvine. “[There were] a few hurdles I had to jump over to get here, but I’d do it every day of the week.” In the HBO documentary on the American men’s team, U.S. Against the World, released in May, Richards says, “I kinda felt too Black for my soccer friends and felt too white for my basketball friends … I already kinda feel like the odd man out on both sides of the spectrum.” 

He stuck with soccer, joined the FC Dallas Academy, and signed a homegrown contract with the MLS team just after he turned 18. Within just nine months, Richards was off to Bayern Munich, the legendary German club, and made his senior-team debut in June 2020. He moved to Crystal Palace a couple of summers later. 

A hamstring injury cost Richards an appearance at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and after he had to be carried off the field without his left boot in May following Crystal Palace’s 2-2 draw against Brentford, he feared he might miss another. “My ankle was huge,” he says. “I was devastated.” He tore two ligaments but attacked his recovery. 

Richards is “doing everything possible to make sure he's in the best shape possible coming into this week,” says Mark McKenzie, a fellow Team USA defender. “Whether it's on the field working with performance coaches, trying to get that ankle exposed to as many different actions as possible, and then off the field, we're talking about recovery, we're talking about every modality you could possibly think of, and modalities you probably don't even know about.” 

U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino expressed frustration that Richards couldn’t suit up for the team’s last World Cup tune-up, a 2-1 loss to Germany last Saturday. “I got a little annoyed and I am not happy because Chris Richards is an important player, and we all know that,” he said before the game. At this point, Richards insists that he can play through any pain to move in any direction, which should please his coach. “I look good on the pitch now,” says Richards, with a confident grin. If that form holds on Friday, the U.S could be on its way, locking hands for a long stretch this summer.