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As assignments go, this was a career first. I have covered sports in New Jersey for nearly three decades, attending nearly every big game in the state in that span. Never before had I been told to attend an event for the sole purpose of leaving it.
More specifically, I was tasked with chronicling my trip home from the World Cup match in the Meadowlands on Tuesday afternoon. I asked my editor if he had any advice before I set off on this journey.
“Bring a diaper,” he said.
I’ll admit, I was prepared for the worst. This was the perfect-storm moment for New Jersey’s first time hosting this quadrennial soccer festival in 34 years. France, a popular world power, was playing upstart Senegal with a 3 p.m. kickoff. That meant the game would end just after 5 p.m. — or at the start of our daily traffic hell.
Transportation had dominated the headlines for the months leading into the World Cup, and that attention only intensified after the first game in East Rutherford. The trains and shuttles seemed to run seamlessly, but hundreds of fans were stuck waiting in the ride share lot hours after Brazil and Morocco played to a 1-1 tie.
I was among them that night. It took me (gulp) two hours and 45 minutes to complete the 10-mile trip, and it was a comedy of errors. One media shuttle bus never showed up, then another, then our Ubers were canceled, then it took almost a half hour for (the wrong) media shuttle just to get out of the lot.
It was a hot mess. In this job, people always ask me the same question before a major event like the World Cup: Can I carry your notebook? I wish I had answered, “Sure. As long as you carry ME, too.”
This time, on Tuesday, FIFA approved me for a parking pass. But with all the dire warnings about snarled traffic, would that be any better?
The game ended at 5:07 p.m. after the two teams traded goals in an unexpected flurry of action during stoppage time. I looked out to see that thousands of fans had missed Kylian Mbappe’s second goal of the match on a brilliant 30-yard laser because, as if this was another Jets preseason game, they left early.
Hey, that’s cheating!
So many empty parking spots
I made it out of the stadium at 5:15 p.m., and what I saw in Lot M wasn’t much different than what I encountered on the way in.
Empty spaces. Lots and lots of empty spaces.
This is why the World Cup is so different from every NFL Sunday or Taylor Swift concert. FIFA has restricted parking for security reasons — or, at least, that’s the world soccer body’s official explanation — which has made the event a much bigger logistical challenge.
From the moment the Meadowlands sports complex opened in 1976, driving was always going to be the primary way to get there.
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NJ.com columnist Steve Politi braved the roads after Tuesday's World Cup match between France and Senegal.Andrew Mills | NJ.com
“Private traffic engineers and state officials say the traffic patterns for the $302 million race track and football stadium are well planned and will allow motorists to move in and out with little delay,” a Star-Ledger news story from August 1976, days before the first night of harness racing, predicted under the headline, “Experts high on the roads to Sportsplex”
Oh, they were high, alright.
Traffic into and out of the lots has become so engrained in our sporting culture, nearly everyone I know has a specific strategy. Maybe they park in a certain corner of a certain lot, or maybe they bring a TV or grill to stay for an extra few hours after the game, or maybe they just bake the time stuck in the car into the experience.
Me? By the time I’m done writing, I’m usually walking out to an empty lot with seagulls circling the piles of trash the tailgaters have left behind. Tailgating was prohibited for the World Cup, and with the dire warnings of traffic Armageddon, even the birds seemed to work from home.
I was back in my car at 5:26 p.m. with intrepid photographer Andy Mills, prepared for whatever the journey would bring us. Our first stop was a few miles away in Rutherford, which meant — gulp — a route that would pass the entrance to the ride-share lot, make a semi-circle around the stadium and approach the American Dream mall before funneling onto Route 3.
I plugged the address into my GPS and was given an ETA that seemed impossible under any circumstances.
Six minutes.
Six minutes?!
Better to be lucky than ...
It couldn’t be right. But it was right.
We made a quick turn out of Lot M, zipped past the emptying stadium and encountered our first sign of traffic coming off the American Dream lots where people were paying $250 or more for a spot. But that traffic, which looked light by New Jersey standards, was heading in the opposite direction.
We made a quick left onto Route 120 and then merged onto Route 3 West in what felt like it took less time than Mbappe’s goal celebration. I’ve encountered more traffic leaving the Meadowlands flea market.
As I drove past a giant billboard featuring Spain soccer star Lamine Yamal, I couldn’t help but feel like the inspirational message for me and me alone.
“You got this!”
Others, to be clear, were not nearly as fortunate. NJ Transit’s below-capacity trains ran smoothly, but social media videos from the American Dream lots looked like the early stages of a Zombie Apocalypse.
MORE BY STEVE POLITI
World Cup’s much-awaited return to New Jersey had its hiccups — but soccer won the dayJun. 14, 2026, 12:41 p.m.
Travel disaster strands N.J. World Cup fans for hours: ‘It’s hard to believe we’re in America right now’Jun. 15, 2026, 1:30 p.m.
With 80,545 people at the game, there are only two certain ways to get home without traffic — a state police helicopter or, like colleague Pat Lanni did on Sunday, hoofing it. Sometimes, you get stuck. Sometimes, you get lucky.
I got very, very lucky on Tuesday. It took about 25 minutes to travel the 10 miles home, and that’s with a stop. I thought I might be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for much of the night, and instead, I walked through the front door to an unexpected question from my teenage son.
“What’s for dinner?”
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