![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/P06-260614-322.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt will be Knicks vs the FIFA World Cup in New York this morning Taipei time, and only one winner. <\/p>\n
The city is at a fever pitch as the hometown basketball team sits on the brink of an NBA Championship win \u2014 pushing the Brazil vs Morocco game deep into the shadows. <\/p>\n
\u201c[The World Cup] is going to be fun … but right now, I\u2019m a New Yorker, so we\u2019re going for the Knicks, basketball. Let\u2019s take this win, and after that, we can think about the World Cup,\u201d said actor Robert Chen, 32, next to the Brooklyn bridge FIFA fan zone. <\/p>\n
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Photo: AP<\/p>\n
The MetLife stadium, in neighboring New Jersey, but serving Big Apple-based World Cup fans, will face a major test of its rail link to Manhattan which has come under fire for its steep US$98 price tag. <\/p>\n
However, New York was a sea of Knicks orange as the team closed in on what would be their first title in 53 years if they win the clash with the San Antonio Spurs being played away in Texas. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is kind of craving this victory, and it\u2019s excitement in the air… It\u2019s contagious,\u201d said Knicks fan and Queens-based street cart vendor Angel Diaz, 42. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re gonna have to take one thing at a time, and we\u2019re gonna do the Knicks first, and then we go back to the World Cup,\u201d added Diaz who said the city would be \u201cout of control\u201d if the Knicks sealed the deal. <\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to descend on central New York for the fifth game of the NBA Finals series with the Knicks leading the San Antonio Spurs 3-1. <\/p>\n
Police turned out in force for the first four games, home and away, and officers are expected to flood Manhattan to deter the vandalism that marred earlier fixtures. <\/p>\n
Soaring temperatures and the threat of thunderstorms could also put a dampener on festivities. <\/p>\n
In an industrial section of Brooklyn, the manager of a Socceroof indoor five-a-side soccer arena Lucas Matuszewski said that \u201cobviously the Knicks, as they should, are over-shining\u201d the World Cup. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to compete with such a deep-rooted kind of organization like the Knicks,\u201d said Matuszewski, 24, as children kicked soccer balls on neat astroturf pitches. \u201cBasketball is so beloved in the city of New York.\u201d <\/p>\n
Scotland fan Graeme Buckingham, 53, a fisherman from Banff, described the level of soccer fever as \u201cpoor\u201d in New York while nearby a hawker sold Knicks championship T-shirts at the Wall Street stock exchange. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d expected probably a bit more, a bit more fans, but as you see, it\u2019s basketball. They\u2019re not really into their soccer, are they?\u201d he said as he prepared to travel to Boston with the Tartan Army for Scotland\u2019s inaugural match against Haiti. Buckingham said that high-profile efforts by Lionel Messi, who plays for Inter Miami, and David Beckham, who played for the Los Angeles Galaxy, had failed to win over US hearts. <\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at New York, there was a sign there outside a pub today, Mexico v South Africa \u2014 Champions\u2019 League. They didn\u2019t even know the tournament,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
However, there were signs that businesses were bracing for a delayed onset of soccer mania. <\/p>\n
Vanessa Whalen, the owner of the Black Bull soccer pub in Brooklyn, said: \u201cI do think it\u2019s going to get hectic and crazy without a doubt, and especially at this pub, because we\u2019re a football pub.\u201d <\/p>\n
The convergence of hundreds of thousands of Knicks fans with soccer fans risks transport chaos. <\/p>\n
While Madison Square Garden is not hosting the Game 5 clash, it is a rallying point for Knicks fans and sits directly above Penn Station, the terminus for soccer fans returning to the city from MetLife. <\/p>\n
The two fixtures also clash with festivities around the Puerto Rican Day parade today, and a gig at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It will be Knicks vs the FIFA World Cup in New York this morning Taipei time, and only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,30978,30977],"class_list":["post-265739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-the-taipei-times","tag-30977"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}