It's 3 p.m. in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where the national teams of Brazil and Costa Rica take the field for the FIFA World Cup match in a stadium filled with more than 64,000 fans. But in Brazil, it's 9 a.m. for most of the country. In Costa Rica, it's 6 a.m.
In Dallas, it's 7 a.m. Friday. And for soccer fans who aren't in Russia or their homeland, early-morning soccer is a popular pastime at the Londoner in Addison.
It's one of the best places in Dallas-Fort Worth to watch the World Cup, and people converge there from all over the world. For Brazil vs. Costa Rica, Luciana Powell was joined by her friends Juan Carlos Piña and Simone Pellizzi. The group of expats has been watching Brazil games together for several years.
Powell, who is from the U.S., woke up at 5 a.m. to put on her green, blue and white glitter face paint, then drove from Allen to Addison to watch the game. She wore a blue skirt and a blue Brazil jersey, holding a brightly colored, sequined frevo umbrella — like the ones you see at Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival.
Powell and Pellizzi are both from Recife, Brazil. They moved to the United States 20 and 18 years ago, respectively. Powell says she wishes she could see her national team play in Russia or at home in Brazil, but at least at places like the Londoner, she’s surrounded by soccer fans.
In 2014, Powell says she got her hands on two tickets to a World Cup match, which was hosted in Brazil that year. Despite having the tickets — which are notoriously hard to come by — Powell didn’t make the trip. Flights during the tournament soared as high as $4,000 round-trip. For Powell, her husband and two kids, simply getting to Brazil would have cost as much as $16,000. The trip was out of the question, so they watched the games in bars throughout Dallas.
Thankfully, the Londoner unlocks its doors early — very early, for a bar — for all World Cup games. Even on a recent Saturday morning when it closed at 2 a.m., the Addison pub reopened less than three hours later for a match between France and Australia.
“Other bars have tried to bandwagon, but we’ve been doing it the longest,” says Doug Greer, who works at the Londoner.
He says when the bar first started featuring matches, it had two small screens. Today, more than 15 years later, the Londoner has 14 screens and has been voted the No. 1 bar in the U.S. to watch English soccer matches by NBC Sports. Inside the pub, which was founded by two Englishmen, the walls are lined with the jerseys of English teams, including Chelsea and Liverpool.
But it’s not just the English and Brazilians who come to places like the Londoner to watch the games. Ivan Soto of Addison was born in the U.S. but raised in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. El Tri, as Mexico is often called, is his team, but on this day he’s sporting a plain yellow T-shirt to show his support for Brazil.
He says he came to the Londoner on June 17 with his friends to watch Mexico play Germany, but by the time he got to the bar, it was at capacity.
“We had to go somewhere else,” he says. “But that’s OK because I always have a Plan B, Plan C and Plan D for these games.”
This year, Americans like John Jones don’t have a team in the cup, as the U.S. failed to qualify for the tournament, but Jones is coming out to watch the games anyway. In fact, Jones and his wife, Taciani, joined Powell, Piña and Pellizzi at a table. Nearby, Soto preferred to watch the game standing.
“We wanted to all be together so that when they do score, we’re not just alone at home supporting each other,” Jones says. “We’re with everybody here together celebrating — all in one.”
The Londoner isn't the only place the group comes to, nor is it the only bar opening early for games. Piña says one of his favorite World Cup memories was the 2002 final when Brazil defeated Germany to win the title. They watched that game at a now-defunct bar in Uptown.
“It was crazy,” Piña says. “People were dancing in the streets.”
Over the weekend, Brazil and Costa Rica went scoreless for 90 minutes until Brazil’s Philippe Coutinho broke the score in stoppage time. As Brazil celebrated in Russia, the team’s fans at the Londoner shouted and threw up their arms. Powell danced through the bar, waving her frevo while she yelled in Portuguese.
Brazil went on to win the match, 2-0. When the referee blew the final whistle, Powell hugged her friends and then other fans in the bar, some of whom she just met.
“Everybody’s different, but we respect these differences in the World Cup,” Powell says. Regardless of which team someone supports in the tournament, she says, “we are all the same. We are human beings and respect each other, and we love the feeling that the World Cup brings us together.”
Brazil plays its next match against Serbia on Wednesday. For that game, Powell plans to attend a watch party in downtown Dallas. She believes her positive vibes matter, all the way from Dallas and on to Brazil and then Russia.
“We have the energy and we’re going to pass this to them,” she says.