A few days ago, as Haiti’s soccer team prepared to play its final warm-up match before the World Cup to a sellout crowd in Miami, Ricardo Adé had an idea. Mr. Adé, a team co-captain, had heard that a few members of the last Haitian squad to play in a World Cup lived in South Florida. Maybe he could meet them?
It was not a small ask.
Before this year, the last time Haiti had qualified for a World Cup was 52 years ago, in 1974. That gap meant that two generations of Haitians have never experienced seeing their national team play in the tournament, the world’s biggest sporting event, which is held every four years.
Any surviving players from the 1974 squad would be older and perhaps not in great health. Even if Mr. Adé’s publicist and manager found any of them, he would have a single day off — Saturday, after the warm-up match on Friday night — to spend some time together.
The Haitian community in South Florida, the largest in the United States, is vast, but it is tightly connected. Someone always knows someone who knows someone.
And so, on Saturday, Mr. Adé walked into a small cafe in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood, west of the Little Haiti neighborhood, to have lunch with a legend of the 1974 squad and several other well-known veterans of Haiti’s national team.
The biggest name was Wilner Piquant, the goalkeeper in the 1974 World Cup in West Germany. Now 74, he uses a wheelchair, the result of a stroke many years ago. His speech is limited. But as soon as Mr. Adé approached, Mr. Piquant laughed with evident delight.
“Ricardo!” he greeted him.
There was Ernst Racine, known as Nènè Masson, who was on the roster in 1973-74 ahead of the World Cup qualification but did not play in the tournament. (His brother, Serge, did.) Also present were Ernst Jean-Baptiste, known as ZeNono, and Goebbels Cadet, both of whom played for the national team in later years.
“You showed us the way,” Mr. Adé told them, beaming as several of the men sat around a small table, surrounded by relatives and friends who snapped photographs. They wished Mr. Adé well and urged him to keep the team playing as it has: United. Confidently. Unselfishly.
It was an emotional moment amid the feverish excitement in the Haitian diaspora over the World Cup, which starts on Thursday. Mr. Adé said he and his teammates knew all too well that they had given Haitians both at home and afar a rare cause for celebration after years of political turmoil and spiraling gang violence.
In the United States, President Trump, who has made disparaging comments about Haitian immigrants for years, has tried to end a program that has shielded many of them from deportation.
“We’re doing something that can put a smile on the Haitian community,” Mr. Adé said.
Erica Dumas, Mr. Adé’s publicist, who helped track down Mr. Piquant and the other 1974 World Cup veterans, said Mr. Adé and his teammates had carried “the weight of an entire diaspora,” not only in Florida but also in New York, Boston, Montreal and Paris.
“I’m getting calls from people all over the world helping with traveling logistics or just trying to find jerseys that are completely sold out,” Ms. Dumas said.
Mr. Adé, a center back, was born in Haiti but plays club soccer professionally in Ecuador, where he lives. He has not been back to Haiti since December 2021.
More than half of the players on the 26-member roster were born outside Haiti, and many have never set foot in the Caribbean nation. The situation is so unstable there that the squad played its home-field matches to qualify for the World Cup not in Haiti, but in Curaçao.
Mr. Adé said it felt like home when the Haitian team took the field on Friday night in Miami for a friendly match against Peru. Haiti lost 1-2, but the result mattered little. The fans were enthralled by Les Grenadiers, or the soldiers, as the team is known.
“I want to play every game like this,” Mr. Adé said on Saturday.
Because Haiti had not qualified for a World Cup since 1974, Haitians often rooted for other countries during the tournament. Mr. Piquant acknowledged rooting for Argentina. Mr. Adé rooted for Brazil. Now, fans are proudly wearing Haiti’s deep-blue jersey.
In the coming days, the squad will relocate to its base camp in New Jersey for the World Cup. Over three group-stage matches, Haiti will face off against Scotland in Boston, Brazil in Philadelphia and Morocco in Atlanta. Some groups in South Florida are organizing to take fans to the Atlanta match by bus.
Mr. Jean-Baptiste, the former player, who wore a Haiti jersey on Saturday, plans to follow the team around the country. He is part of a group of ex-players who have scheduled “legends for peace” matches to play in each city ahead of the national team.
“All the news you hear from Haiti is bad news,” he said. He pointed to Mr. Adé and said, “They’re the only good news.”
“The World Cup,” he added, “is about more than soccer.”
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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