{"id":1787,"date":"2026-06-10T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:40:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:40:00","slug":"paraguayan-fans-break-the-bank-to-see-their-team-play-in-the-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1787","title":{"rendered":"Paraguayan fans break the bank to see their team play in the World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s been a long 16-year wait for Paraguayan soccer fans, and many are now willing to spend thousands of dollars to see their team play in the World Cup in California.<\/p>\n

Read more East Palo Alto man gets 17 years for more than 50 robberies that netted $2 million in goods<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cF\u00fatbol [soccer] is part of our passion,\u201d says Viviana Figueredo, who lives in South Jordan, Utah. Figueredo, who has already been at Paraguay\u2019s training session in San Jose, is planning to be in town for all of her team\u2019s three games in California, driving or flying back and forth each time. She says eight family members will join from Paraguay.<\/p>\n

For Paraguay\u2019s opening game against the U.S. in Los Angeles on Friday, Figueredo, 43, plans to drive with her husband, daughter, mother and 10 friends to support and enjoy the atmosphere around her national team\u2019s debut in this World Cup, but doesn\u2019t plan to go to the game because prices for the match are among the highest set by FIFA for the whole tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cL.A. is beyond our possibilities,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> World Cup 2026: A guide for Bay Area soccer fans, visitors, residents and everyone else<\/p>\n

Figueredo and her family hope to go to one of Paraguay\u2019s matches in the Bay Area, planning to spend up to $500 per ticket. For their L.A. trip, she estimates they\u2019ll spend up to $2,500 in transportation, food, three nights of accommodations and souvenirs. Figueredo, who is originally from Paraguay\u2019s capital of Asunci\u00f3n and has been in the U.S. for 11 years, has a small maintenance business and is also the president of the Association of Paraguayans in Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe World Cup is every four years and it\u2019ll be some time before it\u2019s so close to us, so it\u2019s worth it,\u201d says Figueredo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an enormous joy. Something difficult to explain,\u201d says Miguel Zaracho, 69, president of the Paraguayan Soccer League of New York, who plans to come with two friends to the Bay Area to see Paraguay\u2019s matches against Turkey and Australia at Levi\u2019s Stadium. \u201cParaguayans have been expecting this for 16 years.\u201d Zaracho works in construction, lives in Westchester, New York and has been in the United States for 42 years.<\/p>\n

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Zaracho is a lifelong soccer fan who goes to New York City FC\u2019s MLS games about four times a year. He roots for Club Cerro Porte\u00f1o, the second-winningest team in Paraguay\u2019s professional league. In 1998, Zaracho traveled with his two oldest kids to the World Cup in France. \u201cIt was a complete party, people singing\u201d on the streets, he says. \u201cI hope we\u2019ll see that (in the Bay Area), but France is a soccer-mad country. The U.S. is not, but it might become one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jazm\u00edn Gustale Gill, 44, founder and managing partner of iThink.VC, a venture capital firm for Latin American startups, plans to spend the summer in Palo Alto with her husband and four children and watch her national team play.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a great milestone for the national team after 16 years, especially playing in the U.S.,\u201d says Gustale, who went to several of Paraguay\u2019s qualifying matches. \u201cF\u00fatbol is everything for us Paraguayans.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she got tickets through FIFA\u2019s lotteries, lucking out twice, paying way below current prices to buy tickets online. Before the group draw, Gustale bought plane tickets to Miami. Then, she bought flights from Florida to San Francisco in December when the groups were confirmed and before prices were impacted by the oil price hike due to the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

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\u201cCalifornia is super expensive,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s why it was important to plan ahead of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gustale received an MBA from Stanford in 2017. Coming back to the Bay Area, she says, is like going back home for her and her family. Her mother will join them for the second game in Santa Clara, while her father and three brothers plan to go to Friday\u2019s game in Los Angeles, the two Bay Area matches and others in Vancouver and Seattle.<\/p>\n

With two games in the Bay Area and one in Los Angeles, Paraguay is among the teams traveling the least throughout the group phase. SoFi Stadium and Levi\u2019s Stadium are 350 miles apart.<\/p>\n

The last time Paraguay played in a World Cup, in South Africa 2010, it finished first in its group and lost to eventual champion Spain in the quarterfinals, 1-0. To qualify for the World Cup, Paraguay has to compete against some of the best national teams in the world, including Argentina and Brazil. The expansion to 48 teams for the 2026 tournament increased the number of automatic berths for South American teams from four to six. Paraguay qualified in sixth place.<\/p>\n

When Paraguay qualified, says Edgar Cantero, a Paraguayan sports journalist who covered Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, \u201cthe reaction was that Paraguay would play as a local team in the U.S.\u201d But, he adds, \u201cIt\u2019s a really high cost, a very high investment.\u201d Cantero, who is already in Los Angeles for the game against the U.S., explains that some Paraguayans have gone into debt to come to the tournament, but \u201cyou have to be making good money as well\u201d to travel to the event.<\/p>\n

Joel N\u00fa\u00f1ez, a travel agent with El Turista PY in Asunci\u00f3n, estimates that 5,000 to 6,000 Paraguayans will travel to the U.S. for the World Cup, based on his conversations with other local travel agencies. His agency sells 15-day packages to California for all three group games for $10,000 to $12,000 per person. People who bought these packages, he says, have high purchasing power relative to the rest of the nation, where the average monthly income was about $517 in 2025, according to the National Statistics Institute.<\/p>\n

Coming to the U.S. is not only a financial commitment. The shortest flights from Paraguay, says N\u00fa\u00f1ez, take about 20 hours with one or two layovers, but some are up to 40 hours long.<\/p>\n

N\u00fa\u00f1ez says his clients were able to get U.S. visas for $185 with proof of travel reservations and tickets to the World Cup. The visa process, which used to take up to four months, was sped up to a matter of days, according to N\u00fa\u00f1ez. Still, some Paraguayans were denied visas, like singer Marilina Bogado, who said she was going to sing Paraguay\u2019s national anthem in one of the games.<\/p>\n

Zaracho, whose monthly rent in New York is $2,200, says he plans to spend between $1,000 and $1,500 in California for food, taxis and gifts, after paying $900 for tickets. He\u2019s staying with a friend of a friend in San Jose for free.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t plan to spare any expense,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s why I work all the time. To enjoy something that only happens every four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more How California\u2019s economy survives: Its workers are No. 3 for productivity<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Christian Babcock contributed to this story<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a 16-year wait, Paraguay’s national soccer team is back in the World Cup and will play all its games in California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nParaguayan fans break the bank to see their team play in the World Cup - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1787\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paraguayan fans break the bank to see their team play in the World Cup - Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After a 16-year wait, Paraguay's national soccer team is back in the World Cup and will play all its games in California.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1787\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-10T17:40:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/13065d40d633843429ac57d4e5c06f9b\"},\"headline\":\"Paraguayan fans break the bank to see their team play in the World Cup\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-10T17:40:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787\"},\"wordCount\":1186,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/f2cb138967ad745f7cdf27de1f299038.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Sports\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=1787\",\"name\":\"Paraguayan fans break the bank to see their team play in the World Cup - 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