The Celtics and Bruins flopped in the first rounds of their respective playoffs. The Patriots are a long-running soap opera, now starring head coach Mike Vrabel for his off-field performance. The Red Sox are a swing-and-a-miss disappointment so far this season.
And it’s only June! What are we supposed to watch and follow this summer?
Soccer, of course. It’s our national game in 2026 — at least until NFL and college football camps open in July – and it’s everywhere these days.
My grocery store in Bristol is selling Portugal-themed mini soccer balls. CVS is pushing FIFA World Cup water bottles, key chains, stickers and soft soccer balls for dogs. That’s right. Dogs.
Two weeks ago, I was walking across Boston Common on a spectacular late afternoon. I passed a well-kept ball field but did not see shortstop hopefuls fielding grounders or hear the ping of a metal bat. Instead, I watched a bunch of little kids on the outfield grass kicking a soccer ball.
A few days later, I drove to Hopkinton, Mass. to watch my granddaughter Wetherly and her Ocean State Elite teammates play in the championship game of a tournament. A soccer tournament. My grandson Hudson is also gearing up with his Black Goose club team for the postseason.
When I was their age, June meant baseball. Little League games at the Neal Playstead in Methuen, Mass., just 28 miles from Fenway Park. No longer. Summer means soccer. So do fall, winter and spring.
For half a century, McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket was the home of the PawSox, the top minor-league baseball club of the Boston Red Sox. Today, the PawSox are gone, reborn in 2021 as the WooSox in Worcester, Mass. McCoy is gone as well, the site being reborn as the $326-million Pawtucket High School.
Today, we have Centerville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, a 12,000-seat facility for, you guessed it, SOCCER. Opened in 2025, it is the home of the Rhode Island F.C., a second-tier professional soccer club. Centerville Bank Stadium is also the temporary home of the Boston Legacy, a women’s professional soccer team that wrote a little history here on May 22 when it played the first women’s professional soccer game in the Ocean State.
If you have missed all of this, don’t worry. Soccer is about to explode in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and elsewhere in North America. The FIFA World Cup is coming to a stadium, campus or FanZone near you.
This will be a five-week celebration of the beautiful game with the best players from 48 nations showing us how good they are. They will play on grass in 16 stadiums throughout North America. Turf specialists at the University of Tennessee have worked to ensure that playing surfaces are as uniform as possible, given the varied locales. Players should not notice any change beneath their cleated feet from Mexico City to Kansas City to Vancouver to Foxborough.
Gillette Stadium, home of the NFL’s New England Patriots, has been renamed Boston Stadium for the duration of this tournament, per FIFA, soccer’s international governing body.
Here is the Foxborough schedule:
- Saturday, June 13: Haiti vs. Scotland, 9 p.m.
- Tuesday, June 16: Iraq vs. Norway, 6 p.m.
- Friday, June 19: Scotland vs. Morocco, 6 p.m.
- Wednesday, June 23: England vs. Ghana, 4 p.m.
- Friday, June 26: Norway vs. France, 3 p.m.
- Monday, June 29: Round of 32, 4:30 p.m
- Thursday, July 9: Quarterfinals, 4 p.m.
Officials have urged fans to use public transportation whenever possible. But you won’t have to battle traffic on Route 1 to Foxborough to savor the World Cup experience. The FIFA-sanctioned PVD FanZone has popped up on Station Park, that grassy expanse tucked adjacent to Providence Station, home of Amtrak and the MBTA commuter train to Boston.
From June 11 to July 19, soccer fans will be able to join watch parties and follow all the action on giant screens; shop among vendor stalls; savor fare from a roster of food trucks; quench their thirst in a beer, wine and spirits garden; and enjoy live entertainment on stage.
Essentially, fans will be able to eat, drink and be merry from late morning or early afternoon until late at night. The FanZone spotlight will shine on Haiti on June 13, Germany on June 14, Canada on June 18, Ghana on June 20 and Scotland on June 24. (Fun local fact: The Providence-based Ghana delegation is training at Bryant University’s campus in Smithfield.) Fans can also visit the Portugal Futebol Experience in Waterplace Park across from the PVD FanZone.
This World Cup spectacle has had its share of controversy. Exorbitant ticket prices, overpriced hotel rooms and absurdly expensive travel packages shut out the average soccer fan. In many respects, price gouging resembled any Super Bowl of March Madness in America, but howls of protest here and overseas persisted. When demand did not meet supply, prices started to drop.
Who knows how all this will turn out? The quality of play on the pitch should be excellent. And if these FanZones live up to their hype, the experience of average soccer fans should be memorable.
At the very minimum, for the next five weeks, we won’t have to mourn the premature departure of the Celtics and Bruins, shake our heads at the actions of the Patriots and wonder if the Red Sox will become relevant by Labor Day. We will be enjoying this Summer of Soccer right here in our backyard.
