New York has always been two cities at once. One looks to tradition, institutions and sporting dynasties; the other to ambition, reinvention and the promise of the American dream. In American football, these two souls have names — the Giants and the Jets — and for more than forty years they have shared the same home, first Giants Stadium and now MetLife Stadium. Yet that home is not in New York at all, but in the marshlands of New Jersey, surrounded by highways, parking lots and shopping malls.
It is here, in perhaps the least New York setting imaginable, that the 2026 FIFA World Cup final will be played on July 19. But things could have turned out very differently. For years, the Jets’ great ambition — the franchise founded in 1960 as the Titans of New York — was to build a new stadium in the heart of Manhattan, above the West Side Yard, the Long Island Rail Road’s vast rail depot occupying approximately 26 acres (10.5 hectares) along the Hudson River.