Hayley Rodriguez’s father is one of many soccer fans who had always dreamed of attending a World Cup game. But when the global event arrived in his city for the first time, the ticket prices made him resign himself to once again watching on television in his Los Angeles home.
What he didn’t realize was that Rodriguez, 21, had been secretly working with her two siblings to score tickets for him, checking daily to see if they could find a game they could afford.
“It was just funny to hear him be like … ‘If only I was going,’ and in our head we were just like, ‘Just you wait,’” Rodriguez said. “It felt great to be able to surprise the one man that doesn’t accept gifts with the one thing he’s always mentioned wanting.”
With the World Cup in North America for the first time in three decades, Rodriguez is one of a slew of people in the United States now taking the opportunity to surprise their dads with the ultimate Father’s Day gift.
On social media, soccer fans are sharing videos of their fathers’ disbelieving reactions to being presented with World Cup tickets. The posts, which have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, have drawn tearful responses from many online.
Rodriguez said her dad, a longtime truck driver who put her and her siblings above everything, has never been one to treat himself to anything. Even when given the tickets, she said, his first instinct was to insist they should sell them instead, claiming that he’d rather watch from home.
But at the Iran vs. New Zealand game in Los Angeles on Monday, he made it clear to everybody that he was living out his dream.
“He was calling everybody in his contact list, FaceTiming them, sending them pictures to show them where he’s at, telling them how he got tickets to the World Cup,” Rodriguez said. “It felt great because me and my siblings have always talked about how, honestly, our dad’s our world.”
It’s a sentiment shared by others who saw the World Cup as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give back to the fathers who sacrificed everything for them.
Diana Figueira, 25, had been chasing tickets since December. One day, she had two phones open, both plugged into a charger with their auto-locks off so that they’d stay on for the six hours she waited in the resale queue. Eventually, she used her bonus from work to get tickets at around $850 each for Portugal vs. the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“I knew he was going to be out-of-this-world excited … I got some jerseys, and I printed a little paper that said that we’re gonna go to the match, and I surprised him with a box with the jerseys and the message,” she said. “Funny thing, he didn’t see the message. He was just so excited about the jerseys. And then later when I told him we’re going to the World Cup, he lost it.”
Not only was the game in their own city of Houston, she said, but her father has also rooted for Portugal his entire life. Though she and her dad are originally from Venezuela, they have Portuguese roots, she added, making Wednesday’s game a perfect choice as Venezuela didn’t qualify for the event.
“All the money in the world would’ve been worth that experience,” Figueira said. “Just seeing the excitement, seeing a dream come true for him, it just meant everything to me.”
To Jesús Morales, 29, spending more than $10,000 on tickets for the opening World Cup game felt like the least he could do for his father, who immigrated to the U.S. with “nothing but a dream.”
Morales flew his dad from Chicago to Mexico City so he can root for his home team in Mexico’s match against South Africa. Entering the stadium together felt like a scene out of a movie, he said, tearing up at the memory.
“He had dreams of going to the World Cup since he was 8 years old,” he added. “He told me he dreamed of being a professional soccer player, but unfortunately, he didn’t have those resources to be able to pursue that path.”
Now, at almost 60 years old, his dad still plays the sport recreationally, Morales said.
For many immigrants in the United States, seeing the World Cup come to North America has given them a rare opportunity to display national pride for both their past and present homes.
“Immigrants can come and build a life for themselves here, but also still support their home countries in the World Cup, in the country that they’re now calling home,” said Sasha Abdallah, who recently surprised her Egypt-born dad with tickets. “I don’t think any other country in the world, aside from the U.S., which has such a melting pot population, gets to have this unique World Cup experience.”
Abdallah, 29, shelled out about $4,000 to fly herself and her father out from Pennsylvania to Seattle to watch Egypt play against Belgium on Monday.
She said that growing up, there was rarely a day that she didn’t come home to the sound of soccer matches on the TV. But her father, who moved alone to the U.S. after winning a green card lottery three decades ago, had never been able to afford a World Cup ticket.
So when the international sporting event came around this year, she saw her chance to finally give back to the man who put her through college.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever spent my money on,” Abdallah said. “These memories that I’ve built with him in these past few days, just riding the Lime scooters through Seattle, cracking crabs together, watching the game, just seeing the pure joy on his face when Egypt scored — I can’t explain the sense of fulfillment it’s given me.”