When you think of Bruce Springsteen, you think of…New York? FIFA seems to think so.
FIFA caught a lot of flak Sunday when they announced that the 2026 World Cup Final would take place in “New York New Jersey” and included a series of fun facts that were anything but factual.
Their redo effort on Monday didn’t help matters.
Originally, the bulleted fun facts on FIFA’s “Did You Know?” page said Michael Jordan was among New York’s most famous natives, which was technically correct although his family moved to North Carolina when he was five years old. There are a million interesting New York natives they could have chosen, which made the inclusion of Jordan, who is never associated with the state, all the more puzzling.
It also had a fun fact about how the “Monopoly board is largely based on the streets and locations within New Jersey’s Atlantic City,” which was another technically true but controversial inclusion.
Apparently, FIFA wanted to cut down on the negative feedback it was getting about the Jordan mention, so they swapped him and Scarlett Johansson out for a new pair of famous New York natives, Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen.
We can all probably agree that the Brooklyn-born Jay-Z is a great choice. And we can all probably agree that Springsteen is about as incorrect as you can get.
Update on this, FIFA has replaced one of its controversial New York New Jersey Fun Facts with an even wronger one: https://t.co/9k7Feq9zXN pic.twitter.com/uQIxglDYjj
— Barry Petchesky (@barry) February 5, 2024
“The Boss” is famously born and raised in New Jersey, wrote multiple songs about growing up in New Jersey, and might just be the most popular person to ever hail from The Garden State.
It’s hard to imagine anyone’s first thought would be to associate Springsteen with New York, but, FIFA gonna FIFA. New Jerseyans, naturally, were not pleased.
This made me laugh out loud for real.
— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 5, 2024
This is fantastic. The World Cup is going to break me as a Jersey native. This will eclipse "showing the Flatiron Building during a Rutgers home game promo" levels of Jersey erasure. https://t.co/511f1SglBI
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) February 5, 2024
we riot at dawn https://t.co/duB1w6G6wQ
— Terrence T. McDonald (@terrencemcd) February 5, 2024
they said WWIII would start w/Russia invading Ukraine, but this is a Franz Ferdinand moment for the state of New Jersey https://t.co/R3C1FZUsAA
— Rebecca Fishbein (@bfishbfish) February 5, 2024
We look forward to FIFA honoring more New York legends like Thomas Edison, Jon Bon Jovi, and Tony Soprano in the days ahead.
