Finally, at 6:01 p.m. on Saturday, the drumbeat of complaints, concerns and consternation about the World Cup’s return to New Jersey was replaced with an actual drumbeat.

The Brazilian fans in the south end zone of MetLife Stadium provided that soundtrack, which continued almost nonstop for the next two hours. So did the chants, ringing out from one end of the massive stadium to the other in their native Portuguese, pleading for their team’s attackers to push the ball forward.

“Vamos Para Frente ... Brasil!”

“Vamos Para Frente ... Brasil!”

“Vamos Para Frente ... Brasil!”

There were 80,663 fans in the building, and most were dancing, cheering and whistling. There were two contenders on the field, Brazil and Morocco, playing to a spirited 1-1 draw.

And, yes, there was plenty of postgame traffic, too, and some Uber chaos that left late-leaving fans wondering if they’d ever get back to their hotels or homes.

For the most part, though, the result of the first of eight World Cup games to be played in the state over the next five weeks was what organizers had hoped: New Jersey was the backdrop, not the story.

“Win, lose, draw, this is the World Cup!” said Vinny Silva, a Brazilian fan from Long Branch. The trip took longer than he expected, he said, but that felt irrelevant as he stood among the 60,000 or so yellow-clad Brazilian supporters. “Who knows when the World Cup is coming back?”

Silva was seated in a section where fans unfurled five giant banners featuring the faces of the greatest players in that country’s long soccer history. In the middle, of course, was the great Pele, a man who spent the latter part of his career playing in the first stadium that stood on this site. Had he still been alive for this moment, he likely would have smiled at the scene.

When the players walked onto the perfect grass field — NFL players no doubt are wondering why they can’t keep that for this fall — it was the culmination of a long, challenging and sometimes controversial process to bring the quadrennial event to the region.

In September 2021, state officials first met with their FIFA counterparts at a Jersey City hotel along the Hudson River. A video presentation with Robert DeNiro as narrator promised “the world’s biggest game on the world’s biggest stage” before the room’s curtains opened to reveal the New York skyline in the distance.

It was, then-Gov. Phil Murphy said, a “holy crap” moment. Those two words could aptly describe the public’s reaction to many of the developments in the months leading up to this game.

There was the sticker shock over the ticket prices, with a get-in price at $1600 on Saturday morning. There was the outrage over the NJ Transit prices, with train tickets priced at $150 before they were lowered to a modest $98 after a public outcry. Gov. Mikie Sherrill waged a war of words with FIFA over who should shoulder the significant costs, concerns that the international soccer body met with little more than shrugged shoulders.

FIFA wasn’t going to take the black eye if things didn’t go smoothly. New Jersey would. Would the train system, which seemed to catch fire with alarming regularity in the weeks leading up to kickoff, function as intended? Would international visitors, accustomed to walking to their sporting events, attempt to cross our eight-lane highways?

The last time New Jersey hosted a truly international sporting event, the Super Bowl in 2014, the transit issues overshadowed the event. State officials promised, again and again, that history would not repeat itself.

“The trains were easy — expensive, yes, but easy," said Ricardo Martins, who traveled from Sao Paulo, Brazil, for the game and stayed in Manhattan.

NJ Transit posted on social media late Saturday night that it had “successfully moved 21,578 fans from today’s match at NYNJ Stadium via bus and rail in 90 minutes.” The post-game egress, a massive problem at that Super Bowl 12 years ago, was smooth. The shuttles, which the New York New Jersey Host Committee said moved another 16,000 fans to area park-and-ride locations, also seemed to get in and out of the stadium without a problem.

“Today was a tremendous success,” host committee CEO Alex Lasry said in a statement. “We welcomed more than 80,000 fans to New York New Jersey Stadium and delivered a safe, secure, and memorable matchday experience.”

But Lasry, to borrow a cliche from the other football, appeared to have spiked the ball before the game was over. His statement landed in the inboxes of media who were stuck waiting hours for shuttles that never arrived, while fans who didn’t take mass transportation encountered problems at the rideshare lot.

Hundreds of fans waited in thick crowds at Meadowlands racetrack, while others were told at 11 p.m. that no further Uber or Lyft cars would be allowed in the lots. Some had been in line for more than an hour after wandering the stadium grounds searching for a way out.

“I live in America and I’ve been to big events, but I have never seen this before,” said Aline Kubik, a Brazil fan who was staying in Elizabeth. “It’s hard to believe we’re in America right now.”

For most fans, though, this was a memorable day for sports in New Jersey/New York — or, as the temporary sign on MetLife Stadium read, New York/New Jersey — with the area’s first World Cup game in 32 years an appetizer for the Knicks claiming their first NBA title in 53 years with another come-from-behind win.

Scattered among the yellow-wearing Brazil fans and red-clad Morocco supporters were a handful of blue-and-orange Knicks jerseys. Oscar Puente, wearing Jalen Brunson’s No. 11, took his father, Carlos, to his first World Cup game to cheer on Brazil. Then came the big question:

“Do we have enough time to head back to New York to watch (the Knicks) or do we go to the mall?” Oscar Puente asked, pointing at American Dream in the distance. Either way, he said, “It’s a special weekend.”

NJ.com staff writers Brian Fonseca, Anthony Gabbianelli, Patrick Lanni, Brent Johnson, Andrew Mills, and Steve Strunsky contributed to this report.

Steve Politi grew up delivering The Star-Ledger in his hometown of Nutley, N.J., and fulfilled a childhood dream when he joined the newspaper’s staff in 1998 as a sports features and enterprise reporter. A...

Source: nj.com