A little more than five hours before kickoff at the World Cup quarterfinal between Norway and England on Saturday, the crew in charge of the pre-match ceremony at the Hard Rock Stadium near Miami faced an unexpected problem.
The England flag — the huge one unfurled before the players took the field — had splotches of mold. Not even 100 percent recycled polyester, it seemed, could escape the ravages of the South Florida summer heat and humidity.
By now, the flag crew was used to solving problems. It was the sixth match in Miami Gardens, and the 99th match overall in this year’s expanded soccer tournament. The ceremony crews, one at each of the World Cup’s 16 venues, had overcome all manner of logistical obstacles with their giant flags, including at least one flag that was labeled with the wrong country during shipping and another one infested with mice. Each stadium flag measures about 53 by 38 meters, or about 174 by 125 feet.
On Saturday morning, the Miami crew improvised. Stagehands and supervisors alike grabbed brooms and cleaning solution and were able to brush much of the mold away.
The team worked on a stadium parking lot encircled by broadcast media trailers, with just enough space to stretch out the flag. Though the day was overcast, the National Weather Service had warned that the heat index could peak at 110 degrees, in part because of the humidity.
Then, the 22 stagehands prepared to fold the flag in a way that it could be quickly and easily opened on the field by a small army of volunteer flag bearers. On the rhythmic, repetitive count of “One, two, three — go!” they grabbed the flag in unison from one of its long ends and gathered it in a snaking roll. They hoisted the roll on their shoulders and walked it inside to lay along one of the stadium entrance tunnels, ready for later.
The flags have become instant icons of this World Cup, with fans posting photos of them from the stadium. Transporting the right flag to the right match — there are two of each, just in case, that get shipped in wooden crates — and figuring out how to unfurl and fold them quickly on the field requires careful choreography by ceremony crews that effectively put on a preshow for seven or eight minutes before every single match.
Ahead of the tournament, the Miami crew held two days of off-site rehearsals to practice with the flag-bearing volunteers, taking account their ages, sizes and physical strengths to figure out who should carry which part of the flag and imbuing them with a sense of responsibility and pride in their assignments. Each flag weighs about 230 kilograms, or 507 pounds (and more if it rains and gets wet). The flag bearers toward the middle handle more weight.
No ceremony is exactly alike. The Saturday quarterfinal involved the use of pyrotechnics, complicating the movements of the flag carriers. At the first match in Miami last month, between Saudi Arabia and Uruguay, the threat of lightning almost kept the team from unfurling the flags at all. During that ceremony, volunteers held onto both flags — rather than stretching them out on the field as they do for most matches — to follow a strict protocol of respect for the sacred script on the Saudi flag.
On Saturday, the flag-bearing volunteers, about 70 people for each flag, lined up in the tunnel. They brimmed with excitement, the novelty of their task apparently not having worn off yet in their sixth match. They posed for photos and showed off the World Cup pins they had collected during the tournament.
Then, it was showtime. Twenty minutes before the 5 p.m. kickoff, the volunteers lifted both flags. At kickoff-minus-17, in show speak, one group started walking in the England flag. The Norway flag was carried in a minute later. At exactly 4:50 p.m., when many television viewers tuned into the match, the volunteers stretched out the flags, held them down with weights and stood respectfully. The national anthems were about to play.
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