It was not quite 9 on Friday morning, and already Omar Williams, a construction worker from Montclair, N.J., had been camped on Bloomfield Avenue for at least an hour.
He stood sweating amid a gaggle of mostly red jerseys — fans of Spain’s national soccer team — all staking out a patch of sidewalk in front of a small hotel in the middle of one of New Jersey’s nicer suburbs. It was hot already, but word was circulating that the players would leave the hotel for training soon.
“I know everyone stays here,” Mr. Williams said of the World Cup teams playing in New Jersey. A few moments earlier, his wife had pulled up to the curb on her way to work and handed him a water bottle. “I’m not sure why,” Mr. Williams added. “But I’m glad for it.”
It’s not the most glamorous choice for accommodation. Argentina, Spain’s opponent in the World Cup final on Sunday afternoon, are staying at an enormous Hilton Hotel surrounded by highway on-ramps — the type of setting where you would expect some of the most famous athletes in the world to repair to before a big game.
And yet the national teams of England, Germany and Norway have all chosen to decamp to this corner of the New Jersey suburbs. And a 159-room boutique hotel has become an unlikely hot spot of soccer fandom.
Norway’s team had two matches at nearby MetLife Stadium, and so had plenty of time to get accustomed Montclair. The players felt comfortable enough to take a five mile jog around the town in 98 degree weather, according to delighted residents. Erling Haaland, the team’s star striker, signed a jersey right on the back of a young fan in the hotel’s lobby.
Since the beginning of the tournament, the locals have been politely on the hunt. A German player may have been spotted at the Whole Foods on Bloomfield Avenue, according to The Montclair Pod, a podcast. England players stopped for coffee at Java Love on Church Street, according to Alexandria Campbell, 23, a barista who said she served a flat white to Jordan Pickford, the goalie. “It was just exciting that they came here, to be a part of our little community,” Ms. Campbell said.
Word of Montclair hospitality had spread to the upper reaches of state politics.
“I know the World Cup brings the world together, but it certainly brought New Jersey together,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Suddenly towns like Montclair are on the world’s stage with elite soccer players, serving them flat whites.”
That evening, she said, she would be hand-delivering paella from Fornos of Spain, a restaurant in Newark, to the players staying at the MC Hotel. “I don’t know if anybody will eat it,” she added. “But I thought it make them feel right at home.”
According to the owner of the hotel, Jeff Sica, the selection of the MC as a host for teams was the result of a yearlong vetting process by FIFA, the sport’s governing body. FIFA sent multiple delegations to evaluate nearly every aspect of the hotel, Mr. Sica said, from its security to its housekeeping.
“They sent entire teams of people, to go thorough every corner,” he said. “It was extensive.”
For each team’s stay, Mr. Sica has played concierge. When Spain wanted to go golfing, Mr. Sica put in a call to the Upper Montclair Country Club. Before the Norwegians arrived, the hotel’s kitchen staff stocked its fridges with 20 pounds of salmon (imported from Norway, of course) and three different Norwegian cheeses — brunost, gjetost and Jarlsberg.
But when Norway beat Brazil on July 5, the team celebrated its famous victory with a delivery order: 20 pizzas from Bagels by Jarrett in West Orange, according to NJ.com. A custom pie with peppers, onions, diced jalapeños and raw garlic, known as “The Norway,” is now an official menu offering for $24, said Jarrett Seltzer, 44, the restaurant’s owner.
“I was watching the game from home, and I am screaming at the TV when Norway scores, and my 6-year-old said: ‘Why are we screaming?’” Mr. Seltzer said in an interview. “I said: ‘See that guy who just scored that goal? He’s eating daddy’s pizza tonight.’”
Fans have posted up on the sidewalk outside the MC before and after every game, but they have also tracked teams’ practice times to improve their odds of seeing players. Connor Degnan, 19, a caddy at the Glen Ridge Country Club, took his preparations a step further: When the local whisper network told him when England would be headed out to practice, he booked a brunch reservation in the Allegory restaurant in the hotel’s ground floor to watch the players walk through the lobby.
“Everybody knows everybody here,” he said. “So when these big names show up, everyone shows up.”
On Friday, the hotel was locked down — unlike the other teams, which booked only a portion of the rooms, Spain had commandeered the entire hotel in the days before the final, Mr. Sica said.
Fans spread out from either side of the restaurant behind metal barricades as Spain’s bus pulled up in front of the hotel to take the players to practice at the New York Red Bulls’ training facility in Whippany. A bomb-sniffing dog climbed in and out of the luggage compartment before the team was given the all-clear.
In the crowd on the pavement was Manuel Gomez, 25, a soccer coach. He had spent $3,000 on a ticket for the Spain-Cape Verde game in Atlanta, only to miss it when his flight was canceled.
On Friday morning in Montclair, he chanted Spanish fight songs as he watched the players climb onto the bus. A few waved mild hellos in his direction. “I missed the game,” Mr. Gomez said as the bus drove away. “But for me, this is enough.”
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