‘Crazy calm’: World Cup dry run goes smoothly amid concerns over Boston’s preparations

FOXBOROUGH — The commuter-rail cars rolling toward Gillette Stadium on Thursday afternoon sounded more like a rolling United Nations than a typical Boston sports pilgrimage. Portuguese and French bounced off the windows, children traded match-day card games, and cell-phone screens flickered with highlight reels of Seleção magic. Yet the prevailing mood aboard the special 4 p.m. train was not the raucous samba many expected, but something closer to a polite museum tour.

“It’s crazy calm,” Patricia Esposito, a Bostonian who spent 25 years in Rio, lamented as her green-and-gold scarf fluttered in the aisle. “In Brazil we’d be standing on seats, passing food, chanting until the doors opened. This feels like we’re going to a picnic.”

The picnic, officially a Brazil-France exhibition billed as a World Cup dress rehearsal, drew 66,000-plus to the stadium that will be re-branded “Boston Stadium” when seven Cup matches land here in June and July. For weeks local organizers have wrestled with a cash-strapped budget, a tangle of summer festivals competing for visitors, and a last-minute dispute over whether Foxborough would receive promised security funds. Thursday’s friendly was supposed to reveal how badly those strains might show.

Instead, the operation unfolded with textbook precision. More than 100 MBTA and Keolis staff ringed South Station and the Foxborough platform; four extra trains carried just 2,600 of the 5,600 available seats, leaving most cars half-empty and boarding times under 20 minutes. Inside the bowl, security teams maintained a visible but unobtrusive perimeter, mindful of last summer’s Copa América final near Miami, where crowd breaches left children crying in sweltering chaos.

The contrast was not lost on Gaspard Couderc, a New York-based correspondent for France’s So Foot magazine, who scanned the sparse parking lots minutes before kickoff. “Where are the billboards, the chants, the energy?” he asked, exhaling cigarette smoke. “In Europe this would feel like carnival. Here it feels like preseason NFL.”

Tailgaters along Route 1 embraced the low-key vibe. Tom Robertson of Mendon grilled arepas to a Bob Seger soundtrack and pronounced the drive from central Massachusetts “easier than a Sunday Patriots game.” His friend Derek Muccini predicted culture shock for overseas visitors: “They’ll think they’re headed to downtown Boston, then discover a 45-minute ride and a parking lot full of folding chairs and smokers. Hopefully they appreciate the tailgate tutorial.”

For many fans the subdued build-up was part of the charm. Antoine Pidoux, a Montpellier native raising a rooster-hatted 4-year-old on the commuter rail, praised the “smoothness of the whole arrangement” and preferred it to the “nightmare” of stadium parking. Youssef Issa and Soy Abdellsalam drove eight hours from Windsor, Ontario, to sit four rows behind the Brazilian bench for $220 apiece—still cheaper, they noted, than any group-stage ticket this summer. “I never thought I’d see Vinícius Júnior in person,” Issa said, voice cracking. “This might be my only chance.”

After Brazil’s 2-1 defeat, supporters of both sides exited singing. “Today everyone won,” said Emidio Neto of Framingham, yellow shirt draped over his shoulder. “We already have enough violence in the world. Maybe smiling when life doesn’t go our way makes the planet kinder.”

Organizers took the calm as proof that logistics can scale, but acknowledged the real stress test will come when 14 packed trains try to shuttle 20,000 fans apiece during the Cup, while up to two million visitors flood a region also celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary, Harborfest and Sail250. For now, the only certainty is that the dress rehearsal ended without a wrinkle—and without the Brazilian soundtrack many hoped to hear echoing through New England’s March air.