Spain scored, and half of Brevard Court erupted.
The narrow pedestrian alley in Uptown was packed shoulder to shoulder Tuesday night, with fans in red and blue watching from inside bars and around tables lining the alley as France faced Spain in a World Cup semifinal.
When the ball hit the net, Spain supporters threw their arms up. Nearby, France fans leaned back and shook their heads.
Cassie Quach was among those celebrating. Born in Charlotte and raised in Vietnam, she was backing Spain. Vietnam did not qualify for the tournament, so she went with the country tied to her longtime support for FC Barcelona.
“Spain is just where it hits home,” Quach said.
A few feet away, Alexander Mrljesebic was doing the opposite math. His wife is French, so France is his team, even though she was traveling and missed the match.
“Today, France is my team,” he said. “We cheer for France in the family because my wife is French. And the U.S. is out. So definitely France today.”
He said the tournament had pulled him to visit somewhere he might not otherwise go.
“I would never come here, for example, to this French Quarter if this game was not playing,” he said. “I like it to be social and kind of cheer, and we just have a great time.”
The crowd reminded him of watching soccer as a child, he said, when everyone was “all together and just having one goal.”
The next night, across town in South End, the scene repeated itself with a different map. At Platform Sports Bar, fans turned their attention to England and Argentina.
Ruth Berhana was rooting for England, though she said her connection had less to do with the country than with the sport itself.
“I’m from Ethiopia, and in Ethiopia, soccer is all we watch,” she said. “It’s like the main sport we have.”
Berhana said she had been surprised by how many Americans became invested in the tournament. During an earlier match, she sat next to a man from Mexico who wanted England to lose – a disagreement that turned into a long conversation.
“I talked to a stranger, and I got to bond with someone I didn’t know,” Berhana said. “I think it’s rare that we have opportunities to talk to our neighbors and talk to people in our community without knowing them. And I think I’ve really seen that, at least personally, during this World Cup.”
Brianna Gonzalez wore Argentina’s blue, though she is not Argentinian.
“I’m Hispanic, and I’m part of the Hispanic community,” she said. “I know sometimes Argentina can get a lot of hate. But at the end of the day, I’m Hispanic, and I want to go for my Hispanic teams.”
She and her friends had talked throughout the tournament about attending a watch party but kept watching from home instead. For the semifinal, they finally showed up.
Gonzalez also connected the gathering to anxiety over immigration enforcement activity.
“It makes me happy even though, like, it’s scary times,” she said. “People try to make the best out of it. So I’m glad that that’s what we’re doing.”
Her comment came amid a recent increase in immigration arrests involving vehicle stops in Charlotte. On July 14th, federal immigration agents arrested a man outside WOW Supermarket on South Boulevard after shattering his driver’s-side window.
By the end of the semifinal matches, Argentina had joined Spain in Sunday’s World Cup final.
Ask fans why they picked their teams and the answers scatter: a wife, a childhood memory, a favorite club or a shared identity.
Thousands of miles from the matches, an uptown alley and a South End sports bar became places where every semifinal found a home in a crowd in Charlotte.
