Haiti faced New Zealand in a World Cup friendly in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday night, drawing a passionate crowd as the Haitian national team prepares for its first World Cup appearance in 52 years.<\/p>\n
It has been 52 years since Haiti last played in the World Cup. In 1974, the team played all three of its group stage matches in Munich, Germany, facing Italy, Argentina, and other top international sides. Since then, the Haitian national team had been unable to recapture that moment \u2014 one that many fans feared would never come again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so young, and it was exciting watching Haiti play in Munich. Playing Italy, playing Argentina, and playing all these big teams and on the international level it was amazing,\u201d one fan said.<\/p>\n
Now, Haiti is headed to the 2026 World Cup, and Tuesday\u2019s friendly against New Zealand offered fans an early celebration. The energy inside the stadium reflected just how much the moment means to the Haitian community in South Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really excited because you know it\u2019s Haiti. When I\u2019m watching other teams play you know they play really good and I want to see Haiti play on that level one day,\u201d another fan said.<\/p>\n
While Haiti\u2019s Group C matches will not be played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Tuesday\u2019s friendly felt like a home game, with Haitian pride on full display throughout the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited, I\u2019m so excited for my son to witness the Haitian team play in front of him, it\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haiti routed New Zealand 4-0. The team will play another friendly on Friday against Peru at Nu Stadium in Miami. <\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haiti faced New Zealand in a World Cup friendly in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday night, drawing a passionate crowd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-294774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}