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🥵Hot, with highs in the 80s and a chance of showers. Sunset is at 8:21 p.m.
Today we have a look at which World Cup teams people in the Boston area are rooting for. But first, a quiz: what sport are the people in the illustration above playing?
The answer is a bit of an historical mystery. These are members of the Oneida Football Club, about 50 teenage boys from wealthy Boston Brahmin families who played what they called the “Boston Game” from 1862 to 1865. A monument on the Boston Common credits them as the “first organized football club in the United States,” but that monument has been revised over the years: it was first built with an engraving of an oblong American football, later changed to a soccer ball, and then changed again to a pigskin. So which type of football was the Oneida club playing? Sam Turken delves into this mystery here.
Four Things to Know
1. Public defenders working for the state’s Committee for Public Counsel Services are not taking as many cases as they’re required to, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said. Lawyers with the CPCS take on about 16% of cases statewide in which a defendant in a criminal case can’t afford to pay for a lawyer, and the state requires them to handle 20%. That means private attorneys have to pick up the rest, and if they don’t — last year many stopped taking on new cases to protest their pay — the case can’t proceed.
Shapiro called the system “broken, expensive and resistant to oversight.” CPCS Chief Counsel Anthony Benedetti said he and his colleagues “strongly disagree with that characterization.” “Caseloads have increased, cases have become more complex and resources have not always kept pace with demand,” he wrote in a statement.
2. Brockton Mayor Moises Rodrigues has to stay away from a high school student who got a temporary harassment prevention order against him Monday. State police troopers with the local district attorney’s office are investigating what happened, and details were not immediately available about why the student sought the order. But as Rodrigues spoke at Brockton High School’s graduation over the weekend — before the harassment prevention order was served — a woman was captured on video yelling, “You have to [expletive] get out of here. You know what you did to my daughter.”
Rodrigues told The Brockton Enterprise it was related to a local event last month. “At the Huntington Day Parade, someone brought to my attention that I interacted with a student [in a way] that made the student uncomfortable,” Rodrigues told The Brockton Enterprise in a statement. The temporary order lasts two weeks, and a judge will hold a hearing on June 22 to decide whether to extend it.
3. Digging deeper into opioid overdose deaths, which are at their lowest level in Massachusetts since 2013: the state saw 27% fewer people die of overdoses in 2025 compared to the year before. That’s double the national decrease of 14% and the fifth highest decline in the nation, after Oregon, North Carolina, New York and Alabama.
Deirdre Calvert, director of the state’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services, attributed this not to stricter law enforcement, but to increased harm reduction efforts. These can include a wide range of things, from a hotline people can call if they’re using drugs alone to needle exchanges, overdose-reversing drugs like Naloxone, and getting homeless drug users into housing. “Harm reduction is a set of proven strategies that allow people who are not particularly ready to stop using to stay alive,” Calvert said.
4. The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger between GBH and New England Public Media, the public radio and television station based in Springfield. GBH President and CEO Susan Goldberg said she does not expect immediate layoffs at either organization because of the merger.
“By scaling our journalism while maintaining our hyperlocal coverage, we are creating one of the largest public media newsrooms in the country,” Goldberg said.
Which World Cup teams are Bostonians rooting for? The answer goes around the world.
For soccer fans in and around Boston, the game is a religion, a lifeblood, a source of joy and national pride. Here’s why they’re excited about the upcoming games:
Fabio Takahashi, head coach of Cruzeiro Boston Academy: “Well, for Brazilian people, [the] World Cup is ... it’s a ritual,” he said. “I can tell you where I was in every World Cup since 1986, you know what I mean? And it’s not just me.”
César Fuentes, who is from El Salvador but will be following the teams from Colombia, Argentina, Spain and Portugal, since his home country didn’t make the tournament: “The World Cup is a very important event for us,” said Fuentes, who plans to watch with friends and family. “For us Latinos, we feel it in our pores. It runs in our blood.”
Kilder Cardona, owner of Barney’s Grill: “What do you really need to play soccer?” he said. “A soccer ball. You can play barefoot, you can [play] on the beach. ... It’s one of those sports I think that you can play anywhere and anytime.”
Djofa Tavares, fan of Cape Verde’s team: “Everywhere there’s Cape Verdeans. This World Cup means connecting us all,” she said. “And, you know, we have people that speak other languages. But the Kriolu [the language spoken by most Cape Verdeans] connects us, and I’m just really excited. Everyone’s excited.”
Dig deeper:
-American soccer fans prepare for big crowds as World Cup comes to Boston
-Haitian soccer player Frantzdy Pierrot gets hero’s welcome at State House
-Worcester vs. Worcester: Massachusetts and England’s forgotten soccer matches, 100 years ago
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