Зочид буудлын энгийн ажилтнууд Дэлхийн аваргын үеэр хөлбөмбөгийн соёлыг түгээн дэлгэрүүлэгч элчүүдийн үүргийг гүйцэтгэж, өөр өөр улс орноос ирсэн хөгжөөн дэмжигчдэд үйлчилж байна.
Нью-Йорк болон Нью-Жерси муж улсын албаны хүмүүс болон Үйлдвэрчний эвлэлийн хамтын ажиллагааны хүрээнд Марта Бустилло, Соня Мартинез зэрэг 24 ажилтан МетЛайф цэнгэлдэх хүрээлэнд зохиогдсон тоглолтыг үзэх эрхээр шагнуулжээ. Өндөр үнийн улмаас тоглолт үзэх боломжгүй байсан тэд Англи болон Панамын шигшээ багуудын тоглолтыг VIP суудлаас үзэж, хөлбөмбөгийн баярыг талбайн дэргэдээс мэдэрсэн байна.
Тоглолтын үеэр Панамын шигшээ баг Английн эсрэг эхний хагаст гоол алдалгүй тэсвэрлэж, тоглолтын явцыг хурцатгасан юм. Панамын багийн гоол оруулах оролдлогыг шүүгч тооцоогүй ч, энэ нь суудалд байсан хөгжөөн дэмжигчдийн дунд том баяр хөөр авчирч, улмаар Английн хөгжөөн дэмжигчидтэй нөхөрсөг уур амьсгалыг бүрдүүлжээ.
Тус тэмцээн нь зөвхөн хөлбөмбөгийн талбайгаар хязгаарлагдахгүй, нийгмийн нэгдмэл байдал, харилцан ойлголцлыг бий болгосон үйл явдал болсныг зохион байгуулагчид онцолж байна. Ажилтнууд хэдийгээр өөр өөр багуудыг дэмжиж байсан ч, хөлбөмбөг нь хүн бүрийг нэгтгэх хүчтэйг онцлоод, тэмцээний үлдсэн хэсэг Америк тивд хадгалагдан үлдэхийг хүсэж байгаагаа илэрхийлжээ.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
For Martha Bustillo, the World Cup arrived one suitcase at a time.
For the 65-year-old housekeeper at the Lexington Hotel on East 48th Street, the tournament transformed her workplace. It came through the hotel’s lobby and elevator banks, in flags tucked into carry-ons, jerseys draped across beds and conversations with guests from England, Brazil, France, Norway and Morocco.
For the thousands of fans who visited during the World Cup, the hotel was a stop on the way to MetLife Stadium. For Bustillo and her colleagues, it was a front-row seat to the biggest sporting event New York hosted.
Inside the city’s hotels, workers became the tournament’s unofficial ambassadors. They welcomed fans from around the world, fed them after long matchdays and guided them through an unfamiliar city as New York briefly transformed into a global soccer capital. In lobbies, kitchens and guest rooms, they absorbed the rhythms of the World Cup, sharing in the joy of victory and offering quiet comfort after defeat.
Bustillo was born in Honduras and grew up playing soccer barefoot in the streets of her small village before immigrating to the United States. She was thrilled when FIFA awarded eight matches to the city she has called home for the last 30 years.
But that excitement soon gave way to disappointment when she found out the cheapest ticket for a World Cup group-stage game at MetLife averaged around $900, making attending a match seem impossible for someone whose salary is just above $80,000 a year. Bustillo, like so many working-class New Yorkers, found herself priced out of the sport she loves.
But she didn’t let it dampen her excitement.
New York and New Jersey have welcomed fans from around the globe during the World Cup (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
Day after day, Bustillo experienced the World Cup through the guests staying at the Lexington Hotel. Before Brazil’s match against Morocco, she cleaned a room occupied by Brazilian supporters.“I told them, ‘I’m not Brazilian, but I’m rooting for you,’” she says.
The fans were touched by her enthusiasm. Before they left, they gave her a Brazil jersey and a handful of souvenirs.
Then the World Cup came back to her.
Bustillo was one of 24 hotel employees from New York and New Jersey, represented by the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council, AFL-CIO, chosen for their volunteer work to attend a match at MetLife Stadium.The union’s initiative is part of a broader effort by New York and New Jersey officials to make World Cup tickets available to residents who might otherwise be priced out. Throughout the tournament, state and city programs have distributed or reserved tickets for more than 2,500 people across the region.
When Bustillo’s phone rang with the news, she could hardly believe it. She was going to watch Panama play England in the group stage.
A few days later, while cleaning rooms, she saw Panama jerseys and struck up a conversation with the guests.“I will be at the game,” she told them. Surprised, the Panamanian guests asked her to cheer for Panama. “‘Of course I will’.”
For her, this was the beauty of the tournament. Honduras was not in the World Cup, so she adopted the region. She cheered for the South American teams: Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina. She also rooted for the United States and England. The allegiances were flexible, but the feeling was not.
“It feels like the whole country is celebrating,” Bustillo says. “We all come together.”
Martha Bustillo was offered the chance to go to the MetLife Stadium (Hotel & Gaming Trades Council)
That sense of unity ran throughout the experience for Sonia Martinez, a hospitality worker from Ecuador whose job as an attendant involves greeting guests and attending to their needs during their stay at the Westhouse hotel. “There was diversity, people from all over the world,” Martinez tells The Athletic. “Different opinions, different ideas, all together.”
Martinez’s relationship with soccer and the World Cup was even deeper. Her father was a general in Ecuador, and her family followed the sport closely. She described herself as a more casual fan than some of her relatives, but this summer brought back memories of how deeply the game is embedded in life across Latin America. Plus, her country was participating in the World Cup.
“We did great,” she says. “We lost to Mexico, yes, but we played very well even against them.”
As a child, she remembered World Cups past when children collected and traded Panini stickers, then went outside to create their versions of the tournament in the street. One group would be Brazil, another Argentina. It did not matter if it was raining. It did not matter that the country where they lived was not hosting. The World Cup belonged to everyone.
For Lisette Alba, a Peruvian who works at the Lexington Hotel’s front desk, the job means being the first person many visitors encountered when they arrived. It was about more than processing reservations. Many guests had traveled from abroad not only to attend World Cup matches, but to experience New York for the first time, and Lisette wanted that arrival to feel special. The tournament also carried a more personal meaning. As a Peruvian, Lisette grew up watching World Cups even when Peru was not participating.
But she never imagined seeing a World Cup match in person in the U.S.
The idea seemed impossible. Ticket prices were too high. The process felt inaccessible. Fans had to enter lotteries and faced costs that put the tournament out of reach for many of the very workers helping host it.
“I definitely saw it as impossible,” Alba tells The Athletic. “I could not afford to buy a ticket.”
Bustillo said her family told her to go because an opportunity like that “doesn’t happen to just anyone.” When they were handed tickets, Martinez compared it to winning the lottery. Alba saw it as a gift.
The Panama and England flags on the pitch before kick-off (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)
The surprise did not end when they arrived at the stadium.
As soon as they stepped off the bus, Bustillo noticed a sign that read, “VIP.” She turned to her friend and said she had a feeling they were going there.
“I don’t think so,” the other woman told her. But Bustillo was right.
The group were taken to a VIP suite. They received commemorative posters. There was food and drink, and, from the third-floor suite, the view felt almost eye to eye with the players.
“I thought we were just going to go and sit with the fans,” Martinez says. “I never imagined they were going to give us something so beautiful.”
For Bustillo, who has worked in hotels for 29 years and is preparing for retirement, the trip to MetLife felt like the kind of reward she never expected at this stage of her career.
“If I hadn’t had the union, I wouldn’t have gone,” she says.
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The experience overjoyed them. They were workers accustomed to serving guests at the city’s biggest events. For one afternoon, they were the guests.
As the teams emerged and the national anthems began, Bustillo found herself staring at the sea of flags, which she said looked like an open book spread across the stadium. Anthems, she says, have always made her nostalgic. So do goals.
On a rainy afternoon during the group stage, Panama held England scoreless through the first half. When Los Canaleros appeared to score, the suite erupted. The goal was eventually ruled out, but for a few fleeting seconds, that hardly mattered. The women celebrated anyway. As Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants, they had their loyalties firmly with Panama. The team did not advance from the group, but it made a European powerhouse work for the victory.
Post-game, in the neighboring suite, England supporters smiled, posed for photos with them and even wore union jerseys. Before long, the women were joking that they had become the tournament’s “union national team”. The experience was made even more meaningful, they said, because it recognized the hotel workers that had helped New York function as a World Cup host city.
“We work very hard,” Bustillo says. “We made every effort to give them the best, so they would leave with good experiences.”
Some of the luck 24 enjoy their moment in the stands (Hotel & Gaming Trades Council)
Bustillo, Martinez and Alba are among the handful of New York and New Jersey residents who attended the World Cup games free or at a heavily reduced price.
Their experience echoes a broader theme that emerged throughout the tournament. Already Home, a national storytelling project led by a group of New York urban planners, has been collecting reflections from people across the country on a simple question: “What does the World Cup mean to you?”
For many Latin Americans, the answers had little to do with the matches themselves.
“The World Cup gives us permission to be unapologetically from where we come from, at the same time embracing who we’ve become here,” one Mexico supporter told Already Home at a watch party in Corona, Queens. “It’s a rare and beautiful gift.”
According to Betsy MacLean, a founder of Team Wonder who launched the Already Home project, the tournament’s lasting impact would not be measured by visitor spending or hotel occupancy.
“The enduring legacy of the World Cup is what it has done to our hearts and our minds, not what it’s done to our pocketbooks,” she tells The Athletic. “It has opened us up to empathy, generosity and a connection to something bigger than ourselves. Our greatest hope is that cities learn from the deeply human World Cup experience and create the conditions for meaningful connection long after the final whistle blows.”
Sonia Martinez (with arm raised) and a colleague enjoy their day at England against Panama (Hotel & Gaming Trades Council)
For the three women, too, the tournament had become bigger than the match they attended. Like so many, they had each found a team to cheer for.
Martinez ended up hoping England would take home the trophy. Alba left rooting for France.“I want (Lionel) Messi to have that joy,” Bustillo says. “That he retires as a world champion.”
Then came the line that captured the day, the tournament and the feeling shared by so many Latin American fans watching from New York.
“And the World Cup stays in the Americas.”
