Tens of thousands of soccer fans are expected to gather in San Pedro Square for the T\u00fcrkiye-Paraguay World Cup match watch party, and organizers said they are keeping safety a top priority.<\/p>\n
Organizers celebrated the big turnout in downtown San Jose after more than 30,000 fans came through for Thursday\u2019s Mexico-South Korea matchup. Organizers expect as many as 25,000 people to pass through downtown for Friday\u2019s T\u00fcrkiye-Paraguay World Cup match watch party.<\/p>\n
With large crowds, city leaders say public safety is just as important as the celebration.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s focusing on the public safety and how do we create a fun family environment at the same time,\u201d Executive Director of San Jose Sports Authority John Poch said.<\/p>\n
To help do that, organizers have significantly increased security throughout downtown San Jose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are over 50 police officers here, let alone the 40 to 50 private security that we have mainly for crowd control and traffic control,\u201d Poch said.<\/p>\n
The goal: keeping the watch parties family-friendly while making sure fans can enjoy safely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s pretty safe and we brought the kids and it feels fun so, happy to be here!\u201d Aaron Scholl, a fan, said.<\/p>\n
And the excitement continues to draw visitors from around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe atmosphere is just pretty amazing right now, so I\u2019m just excited to be here and represent Australia,\u201d said Tom Prak, a fan visiting from Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n
As attendance continues to grow, organizers are reminding fans to arrive early, expect delays and have backup plans in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really patience. Come here for the atmosphere, come here for the cultural celebration, but come early and have a Plan B,\u201d Poch said.<\/p>\n
Organizers said they\u2019re continuing to monitor crowd sizes throughout the day and will adjust staffing as needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of thousands of soccer fans are expected to gather in San Pedro Square for the T\u00fcrkiye-Paraguay World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[15392,88,90,89,5393],"class_list":["post-367968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}