With the Club World Cup spotlight on New Jersey, Gov. Murphy says NJ Transit is ready

MetLife Stadium is hosting the semifinals and final, a big dress rehearsal for next year's World Cup. NJ Transit has been running more trains for the tournament than it does for Giants and Jets games.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his wife, Tammy, are both heavily involved in the state's soccer scene, including the Club World Cup and organizing next year's biggest World Cup of all.Read morePamela Smith / AP

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published July 8, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

The first 60 games of the Club World Cup were spread across 11 cities. The last three will all be in one.

MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., is familiar turf for Philadelphia sports fans, since the Eagles go there every season to play the Giants. It’s also reasonably familiar to the soccer world by now, from the many friendlies and tournament games it has hosted over the years.

Now the venue will host among the biggest games it ever has. Both Club World Cup semifinals and the final will be played in the Meadowlands: England’s Chelsea vs. Brazil’s Fluminense on Tuesday (3 p.m., TNT, DAZN), France’s Paris Saint-Germain vs. Spain’s Real Madrid on Wednesday (3 p.m., UniMás, DAZN), and the title game on Sunday (3 p.m., TBS, Univision 65, DAZN).

They will bring the total number of games played in North Jersey to nine, the most of any market, after five in the group stage and the last quarterfinal. (Philadelphia and Miami tied for No. 2 with eight games each.)

MetLife was as stung as every other venue by the Club World Cup’s two biggest flaws: hot weather and ticket prices that FIFA set sky-high out of the gate. The first five games there averaged 37,081 fans at the 82,600-seat venue. Teams involved included Brazil’s Palmeiras, Portugal’s Porto, and Egypt’s Al Ahly from Group A and Fluminense, Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, and South Korea’s Ulsan HD from Group F.

Then came a Sunday quarterfinal with Dortmund facing Spain’s Real Madrid, and 76,611 turned up — mostly in Madrid white to back the world’s most popular club team. That put the venue’s average at 43,669 heading into the semis.

It’s no surprise that the Garden State’s highest-ranking soccer fan, Gov. Phil Murphy, believes things have gone well, even if they haven’t been perfect. At least the two biggest problems, FIFA’s ticket prices and Mother Nature’s heat waves, have been largely out of his hands.

“We’ve got the largest, in this region, population of Portuguese-speaking people outside of Portugal and Brazil in the world,” Murphy told The Inquirer, noting that it’s part of why FIFA put Porto and Brazilian teams at MetLife. “That was smart, and then [FIFA] engaged with the communities, and they’ve been reaching out to us to get advice. Obviously, we know the local landscape better than anybody, and I think it’s worked well.”

It’s a safe bet that Real Madrid-PSG will draw another huge crowd, as Madrid faces the newly crowned European champions — and Real’s French superstar striker Kylian Mbappé faces the team he left a year ago. But the attendance for Fluminense-Chelsea is anyone’s guess. The Athletic reported that on Saturday, tickets could be bought for as low as $13.40, having been nearly $475 just three days before.

A check of Ticketmaster, FIFA’s official sales partner, on Monday found the cheapest seat at $51. And at least from Ticketmaster’s online seating chart, the vast majority of the seats were accounted for. We’ll see if the turnout among Brazilian fans is as festive as it has been throughout the tournament.

NJ Transit increases service for games

The biggest logistical issue on Murphy’s plate is one he was happy to discuss in depth: transportation. He and many other officials organizing these games and next year’s men’s World Cup have hammered home the importance of NJ Transit to making everything work. Indeed, that’s a key part of why MetLife beat Dallas to hosting next year’s tournament final.

For Giants and Jets games, the agency’s shuttle train to and from the Secaucus Junction station runs every 10-20 minutes before games, starting 3½ hours before kickoff. After games, service runs for two hours.

For the Club World Cup, service has been starting four hours before kickoff, then running until three hours afterward, with the same interval of pregame service and trains once an hour during games. There’s also supplemental bus service to Secaucus to handle overflow, at no extra charge for fans with valid train tickets.

Though there isn’t a defined timetable for the train service, the impression from officials, fans, and media has been that there’s been a lot more of it than there is for NFL games. When Murphy was asked if that’s true, he said it is.

“That is true, and it is deliberate, without question,” he said. “We don’t want to take any chances, particularly given not just the magnitude of this tournament, but this is the appetizer for, as somebody called it, the granddaddy of them all next year. So the answer is absolutely yes.”

Murphy said that around 20% of the first five games’ crowds took transit to the stadium, then the number dropped to 10% for Madrid-Dortmund. That was accounted for in part by the wide range of places Madrid fans came from, which Murphy observed firsthand.

“If you looked at license plates, you had them from all over,” he said. “I think that’s an unusual reality with Real Madrid, almost unique among global clubs, but folks were coming in from everywhere.”

He would like the percentages to be higher for the remaining games, and he hopes FIFA will help get the word out.

“We’re trying to figure out how we get more bodies onto the trains,” Murphy said. “We’re trying to figure out how we can shift that before Tuesday. I think we can. It largely entails FIFA shouting out to all the folks who are coming to remind them either A, to come early, or B, to take mass transit.”

The semifinals will bring the added layer of ending at around 5 p.m., at the start of the evening rush hour.

“That will be a big test, and [in] all of this we’re on learning curves,” Murphy said. “We’ve got a big command center — multidisciplinary, including regional and federal partners — in Kearny, N.J. All of this experience is not just for the benefit of this tournament, but as you rightfully point out, the learning curve and lessons learned for the World Cup next year.”

‘Hopefully it stays that way’

Just as Philadelphians love to complain about SEPTA (as Murphy knows well, too), New Jerseyans love to complain about their state’s transit system. But when soccer fans visit from elsewhere, especially other countries, they just see a way to get from a city center to a stadium by train. And if it works, they’re generally satisfied.

“That’s an NJ Transit reality as well,” Murphy said. “If you’re a local, you’ve had one experience or another over the years, and you never forget it. Somebody who comes in from out of the region has typically said, ‘You know what, that was a really good experience.’ So hopefully it stays that way.”

The agency doesn’t face the same kind of fiscal threats SEPTA does, because last year the state passed a transit-specific fee paid by large businesses. Though a train engineers’ strike in May caused some problems, Murphy said things are looking better right now.

“We found a solution last year which was painful, but we passed a corporate transit fee and that solved our problem,” Murphy said. “All mass transit systems post-COVID have had challenges, and NJ Transit’s no exception. But funding is not an issue at the moment. There’s the money they need and they’re executing well, and God willing, it will stay that way.”

Murphy’s interest in soccer goes much deeper than the big events his state hosts. He has been part of Gotham FC’s ownership group since the team was founded in 2008 as Sky Blue FC, playing in Women’s Professional Soccer — the league before the NWSL — from 2009-11. The team was an NWSL founding member in 2013, and Murphy’s wife, Tammy, is a co-owner and the club’s chairperson.

Tammy Murphy also chairs the New York/New Jersey 2026 men’s World Cup host committee, working with CEO Alex Lasry, who in turn works quite closely with Philadelphia’s host committee leader Meg Kane. East Rutherford and Philadelphia are the nearest of any 2026 cities, and both expect lots of travel between the two next year.

Murphy called it “terrific” that Lincoln Financial Field had a nearly full house of 65,782 for the Chelsea-Palmeiras quarterfinal, and he said, “I’m hearing very good things” about how the city fared with its eight games.