READING, Pa. \u2014 For Fernando Aldana, watching the World Cup has always been a family tradition. Today, that tradition brought his family to downtown Reading.<\/p>\n
“I’m here with my family… we’re trying to get tickets to a game, but that’s hard. This is nice because you get to be with other people,” Aldana said.<\/p>\n
Inside Santander Arena, fans from across the region came together to cheer for their favorite teams while staying cool during one of the hottest days of the year.<\/p>\n
“It’s a wonderful opportunity. It feels safe… it’s nice because you get a little bit of the stadium feel instead of just watching at home,” Aldana said.<\/p>\n
Outside, visitors could also meet local vendors. One of them was Casa W Distillery, which joined the Fan Zone to introduce its business to soccer fans visiting downtown Reading.<\/p>\n
“It’s a privilege to be part of this. FIFA is worldwide, so it’s a great opportunity for us,” said Waldemar Caraballo of Casa W Distillery.<\/p>\n
Organizers say months of planning went into creating an event that brings people downtown and introduces visitors to everything Berks County has to offer.<\/p>\n
“It’s an opportunity to come into the city, share the moment with other soccer fans. It’s a free event,” said Lisa Haggerty with Experience Berks.<\/p>\n
More than 4,000 free tickets were reserved for Friday’s matches, and organizers hope visitors leave wanting to come back.<\/p>\n
“We want people to come in and have a great time and think, ‘I wish we had more time in Berks County,’ and come back,” Haggerty said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 For Fernando Aldana, watching the World Cup has always been a family tradition. Today, that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,2233,28,736,128,130,129,11868,74106],"class_list":["post-235353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-fifa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-soccer","tag-the-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}