Boston’s Haitian community packed a basement bar in Back Bay last week to celebrate Haiti’s return to the World Cup, and to salute a forward whose path runs through Massachusetts. Frantzdy Pierrot, now 31, was the name on a lot of lips as patrons toasted a player who attended middle school and high school in Melrose.
The gathering came as Haiti’s June 13 match against Scotland at Gillette Stadium drew closer, giving Boston’s Haitian diaspora a rare chance to connect a national-team milestone to someone who grew up nearby. For fans in the room, this was more than a watch party or a civic occasion; it was a hometown link to a moment they had been waiting generations to see.
In the bar, the refrain “Grenadye, alaso!” rose in Haitian Creole, a rallying cry for Les Grenadiers that loosely translates to “Grenadiers, charge.” The chant reaches far beyond soccer. It is tied to the birth of Haiti as a state, was sung during the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and carries lyrics about the motherless and the fatherless. Haitian artist Charlot Lucien said it means “they, or we, as Africans were kidnapped and enslaved,” and added, “We have nothing to lose.”
The history behind the song sits alongside another memory that still shapes how Haitians talk about the national team: the 1974 World Cup. Haiti qualified that year, played Italy, and saw Emmanuel “Manno” Sanon score after halftime by rounding Dino Zoff, even as Italy won 3-1. Haiti finished without a point and was outscored 14 to 2, but that team remains part of the country’s sporting identity, a reminder that the result and the meaning are not always the same thing.
That is why the celebration in Boston carried such force. Haiti had failed to qualify for every World Cup since 1974 until this current run, and Pierrot’s Massachusetts background gave the moment a local anchor that made the achievement feel close enough to touch. The next test is already set for June 13 in Foxborough, where Haiti will meet Scotland at Gillette Stadium with Boston’s Haitian fans watching for the return to continue.
