World Mug: Here are New York's Best Soccer Bars

The Red Bull New York locker room is an impressively diverse place, with players hailing from a dozen different nations occupying every corner of the map. (The only continent not represented on the MLS team's roster is Antarctica.) Among friends and teammates, international relations are typically amicable — at least until the World Cup kicks off on June 12 in Brazil. Then diplomacy goes by the wayside.

"We always trash talk each other," says midfielder Michael Bustamante, one of two Colombian players on the squad. "Especially if we're playing teams from the opposite country."

Colombia faces Japan on June 24 in the opening round, and Red Bulls defender Kosuke Kimura plans to use the freeze-out strategy on Bustamante and teammate Jámison Olave until bragging rights are assured. "I'm not talking to the Colombians," Kimura says. "And when Japan wins against them, I'm going to go crazy."

Much like New York City itself, the Red Bulls' locker room during the World Cup is a hodgepodge of cultures crammed into close proximity and engaged in a friendly but intense rivalry. As Kimura and Bustamante both attest, aside from making a pilgrimage to Brazil, there is no better place to be during the World Cup than New York, where even casual fans schedule their lives around matches, transforming sleepy ethnic bars and restaurants into madhouses packed full of screaming, face-painted fanatics.

Several soccer-centric bars have opened in Manhattan and Brooklyn in recent years, but the key to an unforgettable World Cup viewing experience is finding where expats from each nation assemble to support their respective teams. The Voice consulted a variety of experts, pounded the pavement, and guzzled several frosty bottles of lager in far-flung neighborhoods (all in the name of research) to create these tips for mapping an authentic World Cup tour of New York.

1. Know Your Neighborhoods

For Colombia's opening match, expect to find Bustamante in Jackson Heights. More than 75,000 Colombian immigrants call Queens home, and walking down 37th Avenue is like being transported to Bogotá for an afternoon stroll. Señoras peddle ice cream from sidewalk carts, and reggaeton thumps from shops selling jerseys of national team star Radamel Falcao.

Bustamante prefers Las Margaritas, a restaurant that is ostensibly Mexican, but other neighborhood highlights include El Basurero — a full-on sports bar decked out with jerseys and soccer décor — and a small restaurant next door called La Fonda Antioqueña, which offers heaping platters of meat and seafood and potent margaritas.

Jackson Heights is also a destination for fans of Uruguay, Ecuador, and Argentina, who gather at La Gran Uruguaya, a restaurant and bar attached to a bakery and bodega on 37th Avenue. The owners are from Uruguay, the bartender is Colombian, and the customers come from across Latin America to sip Pilsen, Quilmes, and other beers from home. A replica of the World Cup trophy stands behind the bar. The steak sandwich — a medium-rare slab of juicy skirt steak topped with tomato and red onion and slathered with garlicky chimichurri sauce — is worth the trip alone.

Other neighborhoods known for their immigrant populations — Russians in Brighton Beach, French-speaking West Africans in Harlem's Le Petit Senegal — are obvious targets. Manhattan's Avenue C boasts everything from a sprawling German beer hall (Zum Schneider) that is absolutely jammed for soccer matches, to a tiny sake bar (Sake Bar Satsko) with a solitary TV screen that leaves the owner, as one server put it during a recent visit, "simultaneously cheering and cursing" when Japan plays.

2. Do Your Homework

When Braden Ruddy, a United Nations speechwriter and soccer fanatic from Queens, was compiling a list of World Cup-centric New York establishments for the travel site Roads and Kingdoms, he couldn't find a place dedicated to showing Cameroon matches. Phoning the country's Permanent Mission at the United Nations for a recommendation, he discovered that the diplomats plan to open their doors to the public on match days.

"Try to look beyond the prototypical Irish and English bars and pubs," Ruddy recommends. "Look at off-the-beaten-path establishments — cafés, grocery stores, social clubs, juice bars. People love to connect through soccer and through food. This is a once-in-a-four-year opportunity to meet different kinds of people you live right next to."

The New York–based soccer site First Touch offers a free "soccer bar finder" app for iOS and Android that provides live broadcast schedules and points you to the nearest pub. The app is geared toward traditional pubs and soccer mega-bars such as Nevada Smiths and Legends, which will likely have extremely diverse crowds. For purely partisan viewing, First Touch publisher David Witchard suggests visiting Little Brazil on West 46th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

"Police section off the whole block for every Brazil match," Witchard says. "It just becomes a street party. It's great — everybody is out dancing and playing drums in the streets."

3. Adopt a Team

With USA stuck in a Group of Death with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana, it may prove wise to have a backup team to support in the later stages of the tournament. Defending champions Spain are again favored to reach the finals, and the best place to watch La Furia Roja defend their title is La Nacional, a Spanish restaurant in Chelsea with a tranquil basement cantina frequented by silver-haired men who sip red wine and argue about fútbol. The tapas are delectable and affordable — try a buttery wedge of tortilla Española, big enough to serve two — and the drink selection includes the devious Basque concoction kalimotxo, a mix of wine and Coca-Cola.