{"id":817727,"date":"2026-07-22T03:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T03:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/817727\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T03:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T03:10:15","slug":"new-mass-intl-soccer-tournament-post-world-cup-feat-scotland-nbc-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/817727\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mass. int\u2019l soccer tournament post-World Cup feat. Scotland? \u2013 NBC Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Cup<\/a> fever swept Massachusetts this summer, and now the Legislature is considering a way to keep the soccer party going — with a regular international tournament featuring nations with local ties.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Paul Feeney’s economic development bill amendment, named “No Soccer No Party,” would create the Massachusetts Cup. The tournament would aim to capture some of that World Cup excitement and target teams that already have fans in the state.<\/p>\n

The amendment specifically names the U.S. and Scotland as potential teams to be invited, with priority going to “nations with a significant diaspora in the Commonwealth.” <\/p>\n

The local popularity of the Scottish fan group the Tartan Army has been widely cited as one of the highlights of the 2026 World Cup, and the amendment’s name references the group’s “No Scotland, No Party” chant. But ex-pats from Haiti, Cape Verde, Morocco and other nations held huge watch parties to support their teams, too. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA traffic cone symbolizing the friendship between Boston and Scotland that blossomed during the World Cup was given a very big reception at Logan airport.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Mayor Michelle Wu told the soccer show “Men in Blazers”<\/a> ahead of the city’s final game that the diversity of the fans coming to Boston to cheer their teams reflects the city’s every-day diversity and love of sports: “When we see other sports fans show up with as much pride as we have in our teams, we recognize our own kind of crazy, and we embrace that.”<\/p>\n

The amendment will be up for debate this week as the Senate considers the overall economic development bill. Feeney says colleagues are already lining up to support it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard from state representatives, state senators that said, you know, this is exactly what we should be doing,\u201d said Feeney. \u201cWe saw the benefit during the World Cup, especially when it comes to the cultural exchange that was happening throughout the commonwealth, and we want to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should the amendment pass and be included in the final bill it would establish a working group to figure out how the World-Cup-style tournament would work. Members of the state’s two top-flight pro soccer teams, the New England Revolution and Boston Legacy FC, would be part of the working group. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThere is only one original FIFA World Cup Trophy. Handcrafted from 18-karat gold, it has been lifted by every world champion since 1974, while winners receive only a gold-plated replica.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup fever swept Massachusetts this summer, and now the Legislature is considering a way to keep the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[21898,49,48,3336,714,16378,561,82,13009],"class_list":["post-817727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-massachusetts","tag-politics","tag-scotland","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}