World Cup Fans Flood Times Square as Chaos Erupts in New York City

New York police arrested multiple people in Times Square on Sunday night after celebrations spilled into chaos following Spain’s World Cup final victory over Argentina across the Hudson River.

Exclusive photos obtained by The Daily Mail showed several people being put in riot cuffs as jubilant Spain supporters danced through closed streets in Midtown Manhattan near the public watch party.

The NYPD has not yet released full details about the arrests. A department spokesperson told The Daily Mail late Sunday that the final arrest count was still unclear because those taken into custody were continuing to be processed.

According to the NYPD spokesperson, the individuals detained are accused of disorderly conduct.

One exclusive image showed a Spain fan wearing a Lamine Yamal jersey being escorted away by two officers. Another man, dressed in a pink T-shirt with matching shorts, was also taken into custody, along with a shirtless man who appeared in a video posted on Instagram.

Elsewhere in the crowd, Spain fans lifted replica trophies, blasted horns and crowd-surfed as they celebrated the country’s second World Cup triumph.

And while many Spanish flags were being waved in Times Square, there were also several Palestinian flags as well, which isn’t a major surprise. Spain’s government has been largely supportive of refugees in war-ravaged Gaza, while Argentinian president Javier Milei has built close ties with Israel. 

Spain fans, not of all whom hail from the Iberian Peninsula, swarmed from one city tourist attraction to another following the 1-0 victory. 

In lower Manhattan, red-clad revelers took over the city’s High Line, which is a park raised on an old rail line 30 feet above the city streets. 

But Sunday’s most hectic scene was Times Square, which had been a beehive of activity throughout the tournament. Fans who couldn’t afford four-figure ticket prices had dozens of watch parties to choose from throughout the five boroughs, but no option proved as popular as Times Square’s seemingly endless array of towering electronic billboards.

And on Sunday, Times Square appeared to lean heavily in favor of the defending-champion Argentinians, at least before the match. 

‘We came across a few Spaniards but I don’t look at them,’ the blue-and-white-clad Florencia Luzinin, 30, told the AFP.

Afterwards, many of those Argentina fans appeared devastated, regardless of whether or not they actually claimed Argentinian citizenship. 

While America does have Spanish and Argentinian immigrants, those diasporas are far smaller than others in the country, which may have led Sunday’s turnout to be slightly smaller than some of the tournament’s previous matches.

‘It’s been slightly overshadowed,’ Howie Ray, 42, told the AFP. ‘I think there was fatigue after all the games of the group stage and then the US getting eliminated. Spain and Argentina are also relatively small immigrant populations.

‘You also have the regular folks leave for the weekend during the summer.’

Many visitors from Spain and Argentina did cross the Atlantic for the World Cup, but rather than pack into Times Square, they decided to splurge on tickets.

‘Money comes back,’ Buenos Aires resident Manuel Lopez Maccotta told The Associated Press. ‘This is once in a lifetime. You´re seeing the best player in the world [Lionel Messi] in his last World Cup. Money is worthless compared to this.’

And how much did he pay?

‘Almost 10K in American money,’ said Maccotta, whose friend got off relatively easy with a $5,000 ticket.

‘I bought the ticket before the World Cup final,’ Santiago Burcaco told the AP.

Argentina and Spain fans were comrades in this struggle.

Madrid’s Curro Sanchez spent $8,000 on his ticket, and will now be staying in the city through Thursday.

‘Had a big, big, big fight with my wife,’ Sanchez told the AP. ‘At the end of the day, she understood.’