My miserable 12½ hour US train journey at Club World Cup with £6 purple sludge ‘porridge' made me dream of British rail

The Sun

13-07-2025

STEP AWAY from the Amtrak oatmeal.
American long distance trains are bad enough but the food they serve is even worse.
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The 'porridge' they serve makes the infamous British Rail pork pie of the 1970s look like the top of the menu fare from a Michelin Star restaurant.
And it's not cheap either.
Around £6 per pot of purple sludge that when mixed with a jet of boiling hot water forms an indigo mess that is as arduous on the stomach as the painfully slow services that run between some cities.
You may discover this next year when the USA hosts the real World Cup - a coming together of 48 nations competing for the biggest prize in international football.
Fans and players will be criss-crossing this vast country in many ways.
For Chelsea during the Club World Cup this summer it has been first class travel for a whole month - flights and five star hotels.
Cole Palmer will hopefully be following similar pathways next summer with England.
football tournament is wearing.
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America has hosted a World Cup before. In 1994, when then Ireland boss Jack Charlton warned that someone could die from the heat.
Temperatures touching 40 degrees here over the past weeks, Chelsea vice-captain Enzo Fernandez admitting he felt dizzy during a game and had to lie down. Juventus players asking to come off to escape the heat.
The world is warmer now than it was back in the 1990s and will be even warmer next year.
Palmer has talked of the two hour flights everywhere draining his legs and his soul.
Chelsea's poster boy player turned up at the Club World Cup wearing a PPE mask over his face because he says he 'doesn't like the smell of planes'.
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Unfortunately, he will have to go through it all again because Americans love flying and driving.
Back in 1987 there was a hit movie - Planes, Trains and Automobiles - a comic tale of two stranded men trying to make it home for Christmas by any means when snow puts paid to their hopes of taking a jet home.
It's planes and cars for the people over here. The trains are a joke.
At least the one that took 12½ hours to carry me just 550 miles from Charlotte to Philadelphia to catch up with the Chelsea charabanc as they moved from city to city playing games.
You can just about take a similar journey by rail in the UK but you might fall off the end of our little country into the sea at the end.
But it wouldn't take more than half a day to do it either. It would take around half that time.
Amtrak's number 80 service from North Carolina to Pennsylvania is an experience. Good or bad is debatable.
They know that the 6.45am departure time means passengers are going to get hungry pretty quickly, and they have a captive market for the stuff they pass off as food as you chug along at no more than 40mph with a stinky old diesel engine dragging the carriages behind it like some sad old pack donkey.
And once you reach Washington, brace yourself for a half hour wait while the diesel loco is uncoupled and the electric one hooked up - only then can you speed along at a decent pace.
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Chelsea began their Club World Cup campaign in Atlanta and were so convinced they would win their group that they earmarked Miami as their next training base.
It didn't quite work out that way and they ended as runners up.
But still they chose sunny Florida and glamorous South Beach as a temporary HQ.
This meant flying to their last 16 game in Charlotte and then back up north to Philly for their quarter final win over Palmeiras.
From there's been onwards to New York, The Big Apple, and while it's luxury all the way for the players, they are still getting fed up with being cooped up in hotel rooms and strange beds.
Downtime for them has been ping pong, basketball, dinners together and walks.
Only last week French defender Malo Gusto walked right past me in Greenwich Village, engaged with a couple of pals and having his photo taken the whole time.
The thing with America is that it doesn't need to sell itself. It's the richest and most entertaining country in the world. And it knows it.
Unsurprisingly, being run by someone like Donald Trump means the US is wrapped up in itself.
It's not been difficult finding a local who has no clue that the Club World Cup is actually happening within their borders.
There won't be so much ignorance next year at the real World Cup but don't bet against it.