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soccer
You think I would’ve learned about World Cup fever by now…
On Thursday, I called the moving company to arrange a pick-up for our moving boxes. It’s a useful service — we pay a deposit for the boxes, and get our money back if we return them within 30 days. The man on the phone said a truck could pick up the boxes the next day, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
I was so excited at the thought of our boxes disappearing (they’re currently stacked up behind the couch) that I said yes immediately.
Only later on Thursday night did I realize: Wait. Friday morning is the World Cup. Mexico is playing South Africa.
Oh, crap.
What could I do? I could’ve called the moving company early Friday morning and said forget it, cancel the appointment. But part of me thought they really might show up. They’re a highly recommended moving service, a professional company that helped move our stuff from the States into Mexico. And I wanted those boxes gone.
So I waited, and waited. I watched the Mexico-South Africa game on TV and g-chatted with Jesica, who said, “You really didn’t think they were going to show up at 10, did you?”
Noon came and went, and then 1. Then it was 1:45.
I called the moving company and got voicemail.
Left a polite message, but inside I was angry. Not at them, but at me. How did I get sucked into believing that my time is more valuable than the first World Cup game? Lesley, you live in Mexico. It’s just the way things work here.
I’m going to consult my Panini album for the game schedule, and call back again on Monday. Hopefully I can arrange a pick up when the World Game isn’t on — or at the very least, when Mexico isn’t playing.
Things I don’t understand about Mexican soccer
While Lesley’s studying at an ashram in India, her husband Crayton is guest-posting. Please be kind to him.
I’m not one of those Americans who hate soccer or think it’s a wussy sport or whatever. I really enjoy the games, especially when I can go to the stadium, because as with American football, people-watching is half the fun.
I’ve been to two Mexican league games and one international game, the World Cup qualifier between the U.S. and Mexico last summer, pictured above. (Lesley chronicled some of those experiences here and here.)
I generally understand the game and a little bit of the strategy, though the unevenness in the enforcement of the offsides rule always confuses me. But Mexican soccer has some peculiarities that really throw me off. Maybe some of Lesley’s helpful readers can help me out here.
Why does the Mexican league have two seasons? It does! The first one is called the Apertura, or opening season. The second one is the Clausura, or closing season. (We’re currently in the middle of the Clausura.) Each season has its own champion. If a team manages to win both championships, it’s known as a bicampeonato, and it’s really rare and fantastic, they say. But unless that happens, each year does not have a single team that is declared the best in the country. I find this incredibly frustrating.
Why are teams so inconsistent? Pumas won the Clausura last year, then got off to an awful start in the Apertura. Chivas were so-so in the Apertura last year and are having a great Clausura so far. Nobody seems to be able to get any sort of dominant run going. Good teams turn bad and bad teams turn good almost instantly. Is there a lot of player turnover? Do the good teams lose their players to Europe or something? Is this common in all professional soccer? I feel like in Major League Soccer, the U.S. league I sort of paid attention to, there have been a few consistently good teams over many years.
Why is it so hard to figure out when the game is on? Seriously! I know Mexican soccer fans use sites like Medio Tiempo to keep up, but I have yet to find any central repository of information on what channel the game will be on. The newspapers never have any detail. Is the Pumas game on Televisa this week? Do Chivas play on TV Azteca? According to this, you’re just supposed to know?
How are Chivas still around? My friend Carlos, a diehard Chivas fan, says the Guadalajara team has a special mystique because its roster is, by policy, composed completely of Mexicans. No other team has that rule, he says. So if you’re puro mexicano, Chivas is your team. But this is an international game! Other teams are importing players from Argentina, Brazil, even the U.S. How can a team with this policy, which is either patriotic or xenophobic depending on your view, stay competitive? It automatically shuts out most of the world’s soccer players from its recruiting base!
Carlos is trying to convert me into a Chivas fan. I’m going to watch some games with him this pseudo-season and see if it rubs off. Who knows, maybe this’ll all become clear to me.
A trip to the Pumas/Chivas soccer game
Crayton’s co-worker Carlos is a huge Chivas fan, so on Sunday we trekked out to the Estadio Olímpico at UNAM to see Chivas play Pumas, one of their biggest rivals.
This was my second Mexican soccer game, and I gotta say, I’m becoming a fan. (As fan-ish as I can be. I tend to get very nervous during close games, and then my stomach starts flip-flopping, and then I can barely watch. So I try to stay low key about the whole thing.)
Compared to Estadio Azteca, Estadio Olímpico is on the small side, with two tiered sections of seats. But Pumas fans are notoriously rabid, and so it took us awhile to actually enter the stadium. First, an employee at our ticket gate shooed us away, saying that Chivas fans had to sit “in section 23.” When we walked to that section, we were told to go to another. At the third gate, the employee there told us we should go back to the first one we went to, where the girl had shooed us away.
We finally found seats — with the help of a high-up stadium employee with a walkie talkie — just after the game started. The seats were okay. They lay directly behind Pumas’ goal during the first quarter, meaning we didn’t have an aerial view of the field. But we were immersed in red-and-white, which was fun.
The guy behind me kept whining, “No maaa-mes!” whenever Pumas approached the Chivas goal. And there were several shouts of, “Dale Chicharo!”, urging on Chivas player Javier Hernandez.
My favorite part was the trash-talking. Pumas fans would launch into their traditional “Goya” cheer, which goes like this:
Gooooya!
Gooooya!
Ca-choo Ca-choo RAH-RAH
Ca-choo Ca-choo RAH RAH
Goooya!
Chivas fans would basically pee on it, singing it back and then tacking on a “Chíngala tu madre!” on the end. You can listen to an audio link of the original Goya cheer here.
A few more pictures from the game:
Starting to realize riot police on horseback are a typical sight for a Mexican soccer game
A sign tacked on the stadium gate, basically meaning: 'Don't worry Pumas, we won't turn our backs on you.' The Pumas haven't been doing too well this year.
A sea of red-and-white Chivas fans...
...compared to even more Pumas fans, probably all dying to toss cupfuls of beer on our heads.
Beer sales stop just after halftime, as written on the very helpful jumbo-tron.
This Chivas fan led the trash-talking Goya cheer.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL! (Chivas ties the score, 1-1.)
After the game we went to El Charco de Las Ranas for tacos. Of course, afterward I also had to try a gaznate from the vendor out front. It’s a typical Mexican street-food dessert, comprising a tube of fried dough filled with a creamy meringue mixture. Been eyeing them for weeks, wondering how they were… but I didn’t like it. Too sweet and heavy. Oh well.
A close-up of the juicy tacos al pastor at El Charco de Las Ranas
The gaznate, which despite its good looks, I won't be trying again.
Wild times at the Mexico-U.S. soccer game
Okay, so yeah. We didn’t win. But that’s okay — going to the game yesterday was probably the coolest thing I’ve done here, even if I did get doused with beer. And who knows, we might have been doused with other things, if we would have worn U.S. jerseys. Instead Crayton and I wore red-and-white striped Chivas shirts and kept quiet.
It was a spectacle, though. Thousands and thousands of fans, almost everyone wearing green Mexico jerseys, blowing into horns that made them sound like an angry mass of bees.
Here’s a short video I took that shows what it was like walking in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyyNxoikO64&hl=en&fs=1&]
And a few more pictures…
The bomb squad was there, just in case.
We sat in the middle section, behind the American goal in the first half. A helpful Estadio Azteca seat-finder led us to our spot and then asked for a tip.
Then my vocabulary lesson began. When the American goalie kicked the ball across the field, everyone stomped in their seats and yelled, “Ahhhhh….. puutoooooo!” And the guy behind me grumbled: “Putísimo.” (For the non-Spanish speakers, puto basically means “whore.”) Also heard a lot of, “El otro lado, cabrón!” and “Síguela, guey!”
It was weird to not be vocally rooting for anyone. But when Mexico scored their second goal, the whole stadium erupted. Cascades of beer fell from the sky. The guy in front of us, with “Cuau” painted on his back (an abbreviation for Cuauhtemoc Blanco, number 10), kicked his beer cup into the air, an arc of cerveza falling on the folks in front of him. Everyone hugged and laughed and yelled.
Just so you know, I captured a video of this, too, but my Internet connection is so slow that YouTube estimates four hours for it to upload. Ugh. More pictures for you instead:
We left the stadium a little early, not wanting to get caught in the rush of drunk fans. (Did I mention they don’t sell water at this stadium? Only beer, Coke and Fresca.) Got home, exhausted, around 8 p.m. The city had closed off Reforma, a gigantic boulevard near our house, for the celebrating fans.
