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On June 18, 1778, nine months after they marched in, the British marched out of Philadelphia and returned to New York.
They did so because France had decided to gang up on its old foe by backing the American insurgents in their so-called War of Independence.
France would be joined in their endless scheming against our red-coated heroes by the Dutch and Spanish.
A bit like Eurovision, then.
Advertisement That French support was the greatest assist of all time, as the Brits never regained the initiative and eventually had to grant the United States of America its independence you may have heard this part of the story before.
Now, the French are back for a July 4 love-in in the City of Brotherly Love, and Kylian Mbappe et amis are the perfect headliners for Philadelphias biggest day in its biggest year for a long time.
Because Philadelphia, the first capital city of the U.S., is not only hosting Saturdays premier party to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Were leaving memo, but it has decided to sandwich that day of ignominy (you know I am joking, right?) with perhaps the greatest programme of elite sport any town can host without staging an Olympics.
When we first started talking about 2026, we thought we should be the epicentre of the 250th anniversary of the country, explains Angela Val, the president of Visit Philadelphia, the citys tourism agency.
We were thinking of ways to really go for it, and we knew we didnt want it to just be about history.
We had to get some marquee events.
Initially, we thought, Lets go for baseballs All-Star Game, because its Americas pastime.
Our plan was to go after large events, so everyone had a reason to visit Philadelphia.
We just didnt know everyone would say, Yes.
Phillys quasi-Olympic schedule began in March with the early rounds of the mens national college basketball tournament, a massive event in the U.S.
sporting calendar.
Two months later, the PGA was in town for the second golf Major of the year, the PGA Championship (won by an Englishman..
just saying).
Then it was FIFAs turn, with six World Cup games at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the NFLs Philadelphia Eagles, culminating in a last-16 tie today (Saturday) between the once-dastardly-but-now-dashing French and Paraguay, who stunned Germany in the previous round last week, depriving me of the chance to make a gag about Hessians in the intro to this article.
Advertisement Next week, Major League Baseball moves in for its mid-season festivities, which include the 2026 draft, Home Run Derby and All-Star Game.
The summer wraps up with three very different events in August: cage fighting and UFC 330, womens tennis at the Philly Open and the return of the Philadelphia Cycling Classic.
Ive said this is very likely the greatest five-month stint of hosting sporting events that any city has ever seen, says Larry Needle, executive director of PHL Sports, the agency that persuades big sporting events to come to the Pennsylvania city.
Id love to hear if other cities can match that it would be a fun conversation.
It would..
but is that why Philadelphias top companies raised more than $60million (44.9m) to bid for and then stage all this cool stuff, with city and state taxpayers weighing in with another $80m or so? That would be a lot of money to win a bar-room debate.
Money that could have been spent on things that last a little longer than a soccer match.
Even one with hydration breaks.
We knew that if we did this right, we could put ourselves on track to help the city attract more investment, more residents, more visitors, says Val, the tourism chief.
Needle, the big-events specialist, puts it like this.
I believe in the rising-tide theory whats good for the citys economy is good for everyone, he says.
(This years events) will bring in more dollars to help us address more needs and tackle those issues that every big city has.
Those issues was a reference to my experience of getting caught in a storm after Ivory Coasts 1-0 win against Ecuador, the first World Cup match Philadelphia staged.
As I unsuccessfully raced for a train from Suburban station, the citys homeless took shelter from the rain.
I told Needle that British cities have homeless people, too.
As do cities all over the world.
But I was still shocked at the desperate, seemingly hopeless scenes: dozens of men, mostly, apparently zonked out on opioids, oblivious to the rats scurrying past them and the stench of urine.
It was an alarming contrast to what I had been part of only an hour or so before at the stadium, where 68,000 fans packed in, spending huge sums to be there.
If were being honest, those are universal issues in every big city, says Needle.
It is something our city leaders are focused on theyre always looking for ways to make life better, for those folks but also for residents and visitors.
Advertisement I dont think it has to be an either/or.
(Addressing homelessness) is a priority, but tourism is a priority, too.
Big cities do big things and many things.
Val agrees.
We looked at other cities that have used marquee events to make an impact, she says.
One example is Atlanta.
Back in the 1980s, they decided to bid for the Olympics.
At the time, it was a smaller, sleepier, southern city, not really a place that many people would think about as a tourist destination, somewhere to start a business or a place youd move to.
But what they did with the Olympics was show the world who Atlantans were and what Atlanta was.
And they took all that attention and used it to propel the city forward.
Some may disagree with the assessment that all of Atlantas residents have benefited equally from its growth in recent years, but Vals main point stands.
Atlanta is a different place today from the one that welcomed a slightly wary world to those 1996 Games.
Back then certainly internationally its reputation was more linked to crime than sleepiness.
What reputation is Philadelphia trying to update? Philadelphia is often defined by its challenges and our challenges are, quite frankly, no different than any other city, says Val.
There is the stereotype that were an industrial city, gritty, a city of blue-collar workers, cheesesteaks, the NFL and Rockys steps.
Right? And those things are true.
Theyre at our core.
But theyre not all we are.
This is a place thats extraordinarily welcoming and open-minded.
We are a place of eds (universities) and meds (hospitals).
Were the sixth largest city in the country.
We have incredible culinary, arts-and-crafts and culture scenes.
So many great museums.
Its a very walkable city.
You can come as you are here.
You can be yourself.
Its a place of innovation.
We want people to see all these things.
Im not from here, but I wish people could see it the way I see it, the gem between two rivers.
Val is from the neighbouring state of Maryland, but is an amazing advocate for Philadelphia.
As is Needle, a native.
Advertisement Our perception has always lagged behind our reality, he says.
We had some catching up to do.
If people havent been here for a while, they wont know Philadelphia the way it is today.
We know we still have to grind and roll out that red carpet like nobody else, make people feel the love.
Is that because New York City is an hour by train in one direction and Washington D.C., which replaced Philadelphia as the nations capital in the year 1800, is just under two hours in another? Sure, that has something to do with it, he acknowledges.
Halfway between the biggest city and the capital.
But thats also what works so well.
Our geography is perfect for hosting national and international events.
Were accessible to so much of the population and for folks coming across the pond.
It was certainly accessible to me.
I loved my fortnight in Philadelphia, a sports-mad city where you will never go lonely while watching a game on TV in a bar.
I thought the fan festival in East Fairmont Park was..
erm, fantastic.
And it seemed that Philly felt so, too, as it has been by far the most popular such site at the World Cup host cities, reaching a capacity of 55,000 people several times.
This was undoubtedly helped by the fact it was free admission, but thats just one example of the efforts Philadelphia made to be a good host.
Unlike some other places Los Angeles and New York, for example evidence of the World Cup was everywhere, be it flags of participating nations, soccer-themed directions to the stadium, tournament-related banners, volunteers pointing visitors to where they wanted to go and TVs, everywhere, showing games.
Also unlike some other host cities (looking at you, Boston and New Jersey/New York), the cost of travel to and from the stadium on the subway was not hiked up during the World Cup.
On the contrary, getting there was the standard $2.90 flat fee and returning to the heart of the city was free, thanks to a sponsorship deal with Airbnb.
Advertisement Theres so much to be proud of here, says Val, and the fact that the World Cup, the worlds most popular sporting event, is being played in our city means were all hosts.
We want to be the best hosts out of all the cities that have games.
I also thought it was telling that Boston shut down its fan fest on June 27, despite having two more games to stage down the road at Gillette Stadium.
No Scotland, no party, it seems.
But it also felt like an acknowledgement that Boston, as a more internationally recognised destination than Philadelphia, had got what it needed from the World Cup.
After all, the New York Yankees were in town and it was baseball, not soccer, on most screens in the bars.
It got me wondering how Philadelphia will know whether this big punt on cycling, soccer and the semiquincentennial has worked.
Local, national and international press has been outstanding we couldnt have purchased this, its been great, says Val.
Were having a good year.
Hotel occupancy is up about two per cent, but that doesnt include Airbnb or those who stay with friends.
The stadiums are sold out, and the fan fest is full.
We didnt have to shut down many streets and, thank goodness, there havent been any incidents.
We wont know until much later what the final reckoning looks like sales of things and so on but the energy in the city is great.
Since that conversation, more numbers have been released.
FIFA says fans from more than 190 countries have bought tickets for at least one of Philadelphias six games, while businesses in the Center City District, its downtown core, say hospitality engagements are up 29 per cent year-on-year.
And on June 19, when Brazil played Haiti and the city briefly became Braziladelphia, the hotels were 93.5 per cent full, bringing in $6.2million in revenue.
According to travel data firm Tourism Economics, the only other day hotel revenue has ever cleared $6m in Philadelphia was May 13, 2023, when Taylor Swift was in town on the Eras Tour.
Some economists love this stuff and will tell you it is exactly the type of thing ambitious cities should be doing, while others will say it is all just a sugar rush that changes nothing and distracts people from the real issues.
Sometimes it can seem that economists will say one thing if they are commissioned to write the official economic impact assessment report, and another if they are asked to knock it down.
Advertisement Either way, we know some cities looked at FIFAs World Cup rider tax breaks, security guarantees, fast lanes and so on and said, Thanks but well pass.
If you only look at marquee events through a financial lens, places would have to say no, and that would be the same for all kinds of events, a political convention, a big festival, admits Val.
Chicago said no (to the World Cup).
They said.
We cant afford to help you with that, to shut streets, pay for the police and that kind of thing.
But the benefit is you are trying to grow your citys brand to attract businesses and people to your location.
Its very hard to do that without big events.
We bid for the 2016 Olympics and were knocked out in the first round because we didnt have a good reputation internationally.
People didnt know where we were.
That was in 2006, when the United States Olympic Committee was looking for a candidate.
Philadelphia did not make the shortlist.
It was the citys latest attempt to host the Games, as it had already failed with bids for multiple editions, including the 1920, 1948, 1952 and 1956 editions.
Neither Val nor Needle is talking about another crack at the summer Olympics there would be no point; Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 edition, so the Games are not coming back to the U.S.
until at least the late 2040s but you sense Philly would be very upset if it did bid but failed to be taken seriously.
Our self-esteem as a city has grown; our belief that we can do all these things, says Needle.
I go back to three years, starting in 2015, when we had the Papal visit in 2015, the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and the NFL Draft in 2017.
They elevated us to a new level as a city in our ability and passion for hosting major events they laid the foundation for what were seeing now.
I put some of the points Needle and Val made to Howard Kozloff, a lecturer in urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphias most famous school, and the founder of Agora Partners, an urban planning advisory firm.
Advertisement He explained that the challenge will be to convert the short-term economic impact of these events into something more lasting, particularly in the corridor connecting Center City and the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, the stadium district that is home to the Eagles, ice-hockeys Flyers, baseballs Phillies and basketballs 76ers.
But he agrees the city may have already achieved a less tangible goal.
Philadelphias most durable gain may be reputational, says Kozloff.
It has a genuinely world-class urban core with authentic character and a food scene that has become a national draw.
Presenting that to a global audience in a way that generates return visitation and investment interest, compounding over years, is where the real opportunity is.
He also agrees that Atlanta is the most structurally relevant parallel for Philadelphia as its Olympics catalysed real neighbourhood transformation, but not immediately and not automatically, which goes back to his warning that real change will take time and money.
Kozloff also warned Philadelphia not to sit back and think the job is done just because people like me had a nice time there.
He believes cities only get the benefits they want from mega-events when they remember to plan the departure and sustain the required investment over the following decade.
For him, the big upsides will come if and when Philadelphia develops the huge swathes of parking lots that surround its three main sports arenas.
A stadium surrounded by surface parking is a terrible real-estate investment, he says.
It generates intense but intermittent activity on 40 or 50 days a year, at best, and produces almost no economic spillover on the other 300.
Whether those assets can be stitched together into something coherent enough to attract the hotel, residential and entertainment investment that makes a district work on days when nothing is scheduled is the most important built-environment question the city faces.
Advertisement The World Cup creates the urgency and leverage to answer it.
The question is whether someone is asking it with the authority to act.
That feels like a question for Philadelphians to debate, not me.
What I will say is that, unlike my ancestors 248 years ago, this Redcoat does plan to come back one day.
But only to visit.