Jordan's World Cup story arrives in Oregon
For Oregon's Jordanians, a Saturday training session on The Bluff felt like fate.
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PORTLAND — Zeena Aqel didn’t move to Portland from Jordan 10 years ago with the World Cup in mind.
But as Aqel and her 10-year-old son, Khalid, watched the Jordanian men’s national team train at the University of Portland on Saturday, she couldn’t help but wonder if fate had brought her to Oregon for this.
Maybe she was here, in part, to help send Team Jordan off to its first World Cup ever.
“It’s always hard for people to live outside of Jordan and come to the U.S. and be alone,” Aqel said. “But maybe the reason was that one day when a team like our Jordanian team comes here, they’ll find so many people to welcome them.”
Portland isn’t hosting any World Cup matches this summer. But this week, the World Cup still came to town.
Aqel and Khalid were among a few dozen spectators in the stands at Harry A. Merlo Field, Jordan’s base camp throughout the group stage of the tournament. Between matches, Jordan is staying downtown at The Nines hote and busing up to North Portland for daily training sessions. Much of Portland’s athletic complex has been draped in black sheets to provide the team privacy.
Jordan begins the World Cup on Tuesday in San Francisco against Austria.
“This is a really cool night,” Portland athletic director Scott Leykam said. “We got a cold call from FIFA in 2022 asking if we’d like to be a part of the World Cup. Then it was three years of back-and-forth about what team, and field conditions, and time, and our hotel partner, so to see four years happen tonight is really fun for us.”
Leykam said 12 teams toured Portland’s facilities in the lead-up to the Cup, and UP had a leg up because of its natural grass pitch and its experience hosting Japan last year during the Club World Cup.
“It says a lot about our field and our stadium and what Clive Charles built and what Harry Merlo built and what coach Nick has built with his soccer program,” Leykam said. “…There’s definitely a revenue boost in something like this, but we pride ourselves in being an elite soccer program, and we have two women’s soccer national titles, we have two men’s soccer Elite Eights in the last three years, and this can only help in recruiting.”
It will be good for the Pilots.
But Aqel assured the experience this week means even more to Oregon’s Jordanian community.
Aqel is a public speaker and activist who says “life” brought her to Portland, a place she says she’s “never been happier.”
“It’s where people advocate,” Aqel said. “It’s where people protest for equal rights. It’s amazing.”
She felt that way before Jordan turned the University of Portland into its World Cup training base. Before Aqel found herself reminiscing about the days when a little girl with big hair used to play goalie back in Jordan between a pair of trash cans set up as a goal.
All they needed was a ball, Aqel said.
Jordan has that. And now, the world’s stage.
“We’re always homesick and we’re jealous of every sporting event that’s happening,” Aqel said. “We’re immigrants. We’re from somewhere different and we feel left out. This is the first time in our world where they feel left out. This is our world.”
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor