World Cup champions parade amid ticker-tape, chants and 'I believe'
(Published July 10, 2015, on Soccer Talker NYC)
NEW YORK – Jenny West, wearing a Stars-and-Stripes bandana, sat on a friend’s shoulders, raised her arms out to Broadway and belted out a call-and-response chant.
“I believe!” she shouted in the Canyon of Heroes, a half-hour before the start of Friday's ticker-tape parade for the World Cup champion U.S. women’s soccer team that rolled from Battery Park to City Hall. Her friends – and the crowd around them – answered back: “I believe that we have won!”
West and friends left from the Philadelphia area at 4 a.m. Friday to find a choice spot, near Fulton Street, to see their heroes, such as Alex Morgan and Hope Solo, carried by floats through Lower Manhattan.
Last Sunday’s 5-to-2 win over Japan, which drew the largest U.S. viewership for a soccer match, brought the 23-member squad to a downtown Los Angeles celebration on Tuesday. Now it was time to come East for the first time that a women's team has been honored by the city's ticker-tape tradition.
West said it was a “last-minute” decision for them to come to the parade. They got off work, left the Delaware County region of Pennsylvania, then got on a Megabus to New York.
One friend, Carrie Zimanski, said it was "awesome" to see the team power to victory through Carli Lloyd's lighting-quick hat-trick.
At 10:54 a.m. Friday, anticipation was building. The 1-2-3 cheer of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” swept across a section of parade-goers.
The volume kicked up when the float carrying U.S. midfielder Megan Rapinoe at the front, holding the World Cup, passed through. A wave of arms holding smart phones bent toward her. Ticker-tape spooled toward the ground from skyskrapers.
One girl headed to the parade wore a shirt that bore the message: "We eat soccer for breakfast, lunch and dinner."
For the longest time, most Americans were thought to not stomach soccer at all. But the new century has brought a shift, with whole seasons from the top European and South American leagues broadcast on such channels as ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC and its cable sports network, and BeIN Sports. World Cup rights ignite bidding wars -- Fox Sports has taken the tournament from ESPN. The Women's World Cup, held in Canada, and last summer's World Cup, held in Brazil, delivered overall TV audiences that beat recent NBA Finals and World Series. Viewership for leagues and other national competitions rarely reaches World Cup levels, when patriotism likely boosts the numbers. But the overall trend is more soccer, nearly any time of year.
Along with the victorious women’s team, which notched its third World Cup victory, more than any other country in the tournament, the parade featured representation from Major League Soccer's New York City FC and the New York Red Bulls.
In a sign of soccer's growing grip on a city that now can claim three professional teams, including the Cosmos of the NASL, chants for New York City FC were met with boos and a little ribbing. NYC FC has endured some challenges in its first season, playing at Yankee Stadium.
Solo and Wambach shirts shared the route with team shirts from Montclair Fire, St. Agnes and Bernards Soccer. There were occasionally men in shirts from English Premier League clubs such as Chelsea and Liverpool, but red, white and blue dominated the horizon.
Some fans thought a promotion was in order. A crowd in front of the jazzed-up Fulton Center held signs calling for "Lloyd for President," urging that the hat-trick magician throw her hat in the ring.
Then, like that, as the parade moved toward City Hall, the reverie ended, at least at the southern end. The streets looked like they'd been blanketed with snow-encrusted spaghetti. And then the sanitation guys took over. Like the players who had just paraded, they had a job to do and they knew how to do it.
In one spot, three little boys grabbed armfuls of confetti and threw it in the air on the breezy day, one last moment of reverie. As they were summoned to leave, one of the boys walked over to a reporter, reached out to her neck, removed an errant piece of ticker-tape and then he was gone.
