Joy, ease, intensity, stadium-shaking noise start Seattle’s rollicking World Cup
The international soccer analyst from New York City is impressed.
He and a Seattle local were walking out of Lumen Field, which global soccer governing body FIFA is calling “Seattle Stadium” for these six World Cup matches in the Pacific Northwest through July 6. It was three hours after the United States finished beating Australia 2-0.
That match June 19 was front of what has been the Seattle norm in this World Cup: a rockin’, sold-out crowd that shook the stadium like the Seahawks were winning a championship in there.
The New Yorker soccer guy and the Seattle local walked out of the stadium at 5 p.m. on a Friday — into a sea of U.S., Australia and world fans partying along Occidental Avenue on the stadium’s west edge. Horns blared. Bars pulsed with music. People danced in the street as the 80-degree sun shined down.
Great vibes only.
“This,” the New Yorker said, “is where the World Cup final should be.”
Alas, the championship of the World Cup will be played July 19 back in his home area, in the Meadowlands. Those are the shopping center, harness-racing track, vacated arena and football stadium on the expanse swamp lands of New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
The consensus among anecdotal and online assessments of visitors from and fans of Belgium, Egypt, Australian, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar, Iran and across America: Seattle is the best of the U.S. and maybe the 16 North American places hosting this World Cup.
The downtown location. The access fans have to and from the stadium to public transit on Sound Transit’s Link light rail, as Qatari fans including men wearing white, traditional thobes, did walking from Stadium station to Lumen Field Wednesday before the sold-out match at noon against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Throughout that sold-out match, Bosnia’s fans shouted “BOS-NI-A!” The noise echoed off the stadium’s cantilevered roofs that cover the east and west stands, back onto the field.
Link light rail around Seattle set a ridership record with an estimated 280,000 people on its trains June 19, that day the U.S. beat Australia at Lumen Field.
Almost a half a million more people were in Seattle’s Waterfront Park along Elliott Bay over the first 10 days of the World Cup. There are two watch parties for matches there, at Pier 62. Fans of the U.S. team had a rally at Pier 58 the morning of the Australia match, then marched to the stadium from there.
The walkability from the stadium to bars and restaurants. The idyllic, Pacific Northwest summer weather. A sold-out stadium with ideal sight lines for soccer. All of it have combined to produce a show that’s making Seattle an international star from this World Cup.
Then there have been the matches themselves.
The last one of the four in the group stage was the best, and most intense.
Egypt-Iran, an intense group-stage finale
Egypt versus Iran Friday night at Lumen Field, along with Austria and Algeria that ended the round with a remarkable finish Saturday night, were the two most thrilling matches of the 72 in the World Cup’s opening, group stage.
Friday’s show in Seattle started three hours before the group stage match between Iran and Egypt kicked off.
Egyptian fans, some wearing gold-and-black, Pharaoh headdresses, walked through Pioneer Square through Occidental Park and down 2nd Avenue to the stadium. A crowd blocks long sang and danced and blew horns.
Elysian Fields, just outside the Seahawks and Sounders stadium’s north gates, was the unofficial bar for Iran’s fans. Before and after Iran’s World Cup match against Egypt in Seattle Friday night, Iranian fans wearing green, red and white jerseys danced and sang. The music blared off the Elysian’s patio along Occidental Avenue, and off the stadium’s walls across the street.
Outside the bar, people waved Iran green, white and red flags with the gold lion and sun. That was the country’s flag until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some of those people poked their previous flags, outlawed by the current regime, at others who were walking by carrying the revised Iranian flags the regime recognizes. The current flags have a stylized, red emblem meaning “Allah” in the center replacing the lion and sun.
Nearby, an older man wearing black headphones was carrying a large, hand-painted sign. It read “PLAY MORE SPORTS CANCEL ALL WARS.”
Another man pushed a cart along Occidental with a black sign, a picture of the Iran lion and sun flag. It read: “DON’T STOP SPEAKING ABOUT IRAN.”
The game was promoted as Seattle’s World Cup “Pride Match,” two days before the Pride parade in the city. It was something Egypt and Iran didn’t welcome, per their cultures.
Yet nothing outside the stadium before the match was particularly disruptive. It was, like all Seattle World Cup matches so far, a celebration of the sport uniting national and cultural backgrounds.
Inside the stadium, the final of Seattle’s four group-stage matches attracted the third sellout crowd of 66,925 fans (Egypt’s 1-1 draw with Belgium June 16 had a crowd announced as just 150 short of capacity).
Just before the national anthems and the match, volunteers held giant Egypt and Islamic Republic of Iran flags across much of the field. Iran’s flag was the current regime’s flag, per what FIFA recognizes.
In section 327, the upper deck of the southeast corner of Lumen Field, a woman wearing a white, Iran team jersey offered her phone. She asked for her picture to be taken in front the Iranian flag.
She requested the photographer frame her head so that it covered the red, center “Allah” symbol.
There were a smattering of boos throughout the stadium during the playing of the anthem of Iran, which played its first two World Cup matches in Los Angeles, home of the world’s largest Iranian population outside Iran itself. The boos Friday night appeared to be from Iranian fans protesting the regime and the anthem it sanctions.
Wild Egypt-Iran match
The match began. Thrillingly.
There were goals by each side with the first 14 minutes. The first was by Egypt’s Mahmoud Saber in the fifth minute. Iran’s Ramin Rezaeian answered.
In between, Egypt goalkeeper Mostafa Shobeir saved an Iranian penalty kick.
The game was mostly an attacking, go-for-broke display of elite competition. It was the most intense of the four group-stage matches in Seattle.
It was also the most dramatic.
Door-bell chimes on the stadium’s public-address system kept alerting all to scoring updates in Group G’s other game playing simultaneously 140 miles north. Each goal Belgium scored on New Zealand in Vancouver decreased Egypt’s chance to win the group. When New Zealand scored its only goal on Belgium Friday night, Egypt was back atop the group on tiebreakers.
Iran needed to win to ensure its place in the round of 32.
As the game in Seattle moved to and past the 90th minute into added time, Iran pressed into Egypt’s end urgently and directly. An Iranian shot hit the left goalpost and clanged. The crowd, maybe 60-40 for Iran, roared.
Then, 3 minutes into an expected 6 minutes of added time, Iran scored off a wild scramble in front of then behind Shobeir, after Egypt’s goalkeeper came off his line to challenge for the ball. Iran’s Shoja Khalilzadeh collected the loose ball and sent a strike past Egypt’s frantic defenders at the goal line in the 93rd minute.
Iran’s players ran around and off their sideline bench area celebrating. Khalilzadeh ripped off his white jersey. Lumen Field’s third deck shook, for as long a time as it does for the Super Bowl-champion Seahawks’ best plays in their biggest NFL games in Seattle.
A more-than-tipsy man jumped over the front railing from the first row of 100-level seats behind Iran’s bench. He ran onto the pitch, to join in the Iranian’s celebration of the go-ahead goal.
Security guards plus officers from Seattle Police and the Washington State Patrol tackled the pitch intruder a few yards onto the field. The fans roared some more. The invader posed for photos as the officers wrestled him off the field into a tunnel, assuredly to jail.
He did all of it for nothing.
A video-assisted-replay (VAR) review of Khalilzadeh’s goal ruled he had perhaps the toes of his cleat just past the second-to-last Egypt defender, as an Iranian teammate kicked the shot Khalilzadeh rebounded back into the net. Over the celebration of Iran’s players, the intruder getting manhandled off and the fans’ roars that shook the building, the referee announced “no goal.”
It was the third time in three matches a review disallowed a goal by Iran.
This match ended minutes later in a 1-1 draw. Belgium’s rout of New Zealand gave the Belgians the group. They will play a round-of-32 match in Seattle Wednesday against Senegal at Lumen Field.
Egypt, second in the group thanks to that VAR ruling, advanced to play Australia Friday outside Dallas in the round of 32.
The Iranians left the stadium just after midnight and flew on a jet without any post-match recovery, immediately back to their displaced home base in Tijuana. They landed in Mexico at 4 a.m. Saturday. The U.S. government rejected their access to their assigned base in Tucson, Arizona.
“It’s a disaster World Cup. A disaster,” Iran team captain Mehdi Taremi said, talking about FIFA while in the mixed interview zone at Lumen Field late Friday night.
“FIFA, they have to solve every problem here, but unfortunately they couldn’t solve (our problems) since the beginning. ...We don’t have our logistics people here; they don’t have a visa. ...
“As professional players, as a professional competition, it’s not right. ...
“It’s not fair.”
Intense Saturday
The VAR review left the Iranians needing one of four results Saturday on the final day of group-stage play to go their way to advance as one of eight third-place teams into the round of 32.
None did.
The last match of the World Cup’s group stage late Saturday night needed to end in anything but a draw for Iran to advance. Austria and Algeria were tied after 90 minutes in Kansas City. Then the Algerians scored an out-of-nowhere goal in second-half stoppage time.
Iran went from out to in the round of 32.
Seconds after Algeria scored, Austria scored a goal on a flying header in the 96th minute, 2 minutes beyond the scheduled 4 minutes of stoppage time. That match was tied again.
It finished that way.
Iran went from out to in to out in minutes. Austria-Algeria was the first World Cup match ever to have a go-ahead goal plus tying goal both in stoppage time.
Instead of finishing the weekend flying to the round of 32, the Iranians flew home, eliminated.
Seattle gets two more matches of this World Cup drama, intensity and — as visitors keep saying — finals-worthy environment.
Belgium and Senegal Wednesday, 1 p.m. at Lumen Field in the round of 32.
Then Lumen Field will host a round-of-16 elimination match July 6, 5 p.m. The winner of Belgium-Senegal plays the winner of U.S.-Bosnia and Herzegovina in the final of the six World Cup matches in Seattle.
Yes, the epic scenes of the U.S. team playing here less than two weeks ago could repeat next week in Seattle. If they do, the Americans will be playing here trying to advance to the quarterfinals for the first time in 96 years.
This story was originally published June 29, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Joy, ease, intensity, stadium-shaking noise start Seattle’s rollicking World Cup."
