So I decide to have some
fun. First I raise both arms and bow to
my admirers. Then, knowing that my noggin
is shaved just like El Bofo's was last
season, I theatrically remove my bandana
and model for the masses.
The crowd erupts. Bo-FO! Bo-FO! Bo-FO! Now
they're mine. By the end of the night,
as we celebrate a rousing 2-0 Chivas victory
in front of 65,000 fans, I'm jumping up
and down with my arms around the shoulders
of two guys I've never met before. Two
guys who've welcomed The Gringo Bofo like
any other member of Chivas's famed Rebaño
Sagrado (The Sacred Flock).
And so it goes, just another day in my
excellent Mexican soccer adventure.
***************
The idea was simple enough:
In the tradition of the film Y Tu Mamá También,
in which the actors Diego Luna and Gael
García Bernal embark on a
road-trip of discovery across Mexico,
I would do the same thing with Mexican
soccer stadiums. In 10 years as the soccer
writer for Sports
Illustrated, I'd had plenty of fantastic
experiences: traveling with the notorious
fans of Boca Juniors in Argentina; interviewing David
Beckham, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo;
and surviving a deadly riot between Celtic
and Rangers supporters in Scotland. But
while I had spent plenty of time covering
the Mexican national team, I knew embarrassingly
little about the Mexican league.
Clearly it was time to rectify that. And
so, three days after finishing my month-long
coverage of the NCAA basketball tournament,
I enlisted a fellow road-trip expert --
my college roommate, Jon-Claud Nix --
who joined me and photographer Simon
Bruty in a crappy rented blue Nissan
Sentra on our own journey of soccer discovery.
Over two weeks in April we'd see four games,
drive 905.8 kilometers and hit the three
largest cities in Mexico. We'd hurl creative
insults in the rain with the loyal supporters
of Monterrey, learn how to taunt Atlas
fans from a Chivas legend and imagine that
we were Diego Maradona scoring against
England -- while standing on the same Estadio
Azteca grass where he performed his eternal
feats of magic.
Along the way I'd unleash
my inner Mexico City cab driver, encounter
an American drifter with six bullets in
his chest and even meet Diego Luna in
the flesh at a Club América game.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's
go back to the beginning, back to Monterrey,
back to El Kikín.
***************
MONTERREY, APRIL 6-8
From the moment we arrive at the Monterrey
airport we can tell that we've landed in
a soccer country: One of the first people
we see is Francisco (El Kikín) Fonseca,
who's about to fly with his Tigres teammates
to Guadalajara for tomorrow's game against
Chivas. But if El Kikín is the unofficial
greeter for our adventure, our official
welcoming committee is Pedro Arellano and Mario Cruz,
who meet us for dinner that night.
Like
Jon-Claud and me, Pedro and Mario are college
roommates -- they graduated from the Tec,
where Monterrey plays its home games --
and Pedro has flown in from suburban Washington
D.C. (where he's a software-company executive
and hosts a Spanish-language sports radio
show) to show us the ropes of soccer in
Monterrey.
If you're looking for the most fanatical
soccer city in all of Mexico, you have
to visit Monterrey," Pedro had written
me. "Tigres and Rayados have the most passionate
fans I've known, and I went to college
in Monterrey so I'm speaking from four
years of experience!" Over fish and shrimp
tacos, Pedro and Mario toast our arrival
with a Mexican banderita (shots
of green lime juice, white tequila and
red sangrita), and as we talk about our
college and sports experiences it becomes
clear that in some ways the border between
our countries is no barrier at all. We're
all the same age (early 30s).
We all listened
to the same music in college (Nirvana,
Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots). And we
all have cherished memories of championship
seasons. For me it's the 1985 Kansas City
Royals World Series winners, while for
Mario it's Monterrey's 2003 Clausura champions.
When you're a fan, those rare moments of
victory make all the years of suffering
worthwhile, no matter which sport you follow.
"Sometimes
you're driving your car," says Mario, a
Monterrey manufacturing-company supervisor,
of that glorious feeling, "and you stop
for 20 seconds and you're just incredibly,
insanely happy."
For Monterrey, sadly, this isn't one of
those years. And yet Rayados fans are known
as some of the most loyal in Mexico, a
reputation they back up the next day at
the Tec, where more than 30,000 fill the
stadium against Atlas despite a rainstorm
that will leave the giant Tricolor flying
over the city in tatters. As Monterrey
races to a 1-0 lead (on a penalty by Leandro
Gracián) we can't stop laughing.
Pedro, you see, is a master heckler.
"Sigue
tomando, Navia!" he yells at Atlas forward Reinaldo
Navia, who was known as a party-boy
during his days with Monterrey. "Nice try,
Goldilocks!" he bellows at the shaggy-haired
Atlas midfielder Andrés Guardado.
By the time Rayados seals a 2-0 win I'm
wet and shivering, but that hardly matters.
Our Mexican friends have welcomed us with
nothing but warmth.
"So what's the headline in tomorrow's
papers?" asks Jon-Claud as the four of
us pose for a group photo outside the stadium.
Mario (who's proudly wearing his blue-and-white
striped Monterrey jersey) pauses to think. "Four
cool guys came to the Monterrey game?" he
suggests. Yep, that sounds about right.
***************
Mexican Soccer Lesson #1: The Referee
Is Everyone's Enemy. Early in the Monterrey
game an odd thing happens. When someone
asks the identity of the referee, the man
sitting behind us pipes up. "Mauricio
Morales," he sneers. It's my first
indication that referees in Mexico receive
far more attention than their American
counterparts -- and that almost all of
it is negative.
Don't get me wrong: Major League Soccer
referees are generally terrible, but the
media doesn't present them as potentially
crooked. Not so in Mexico, where even a
respected paper like the Cancha sports
section found in Reforma and Mural includes
passages like this one before the game
between Chivas and Atlas: "There is someone
who enters this Clásico Tapatío
as the villain, and it's not exactly a
player, but rather the referee."
The paper
goes on to note more information than you'd
ever want to know about referee Fabián
Delgado Horcasitas, including
his birthdate (January 8, 1970), birthplace
(Cuernavaca) and supposedly suspicious
record ("his record isn't the most favorable").
What causes such widespread distrust of
the referee? I only have to open my newspaper
to the op-ed section to find out (courtesy
of famed Mexican soccer writer Juan
Villorio): "For the common fan the
referee represents someone who can ruin
the party. The referee is an obstacle to
overcome." It's a lesson that I'll keep
in mind as I read the daily papers, which
invariably include a detailed analysis
of every referee's performance in their
postgame reports.
***************
GUADALAJARA, APRIL 12-14
At the Monterrey airport we run into the
Atlas team, which gives me the chance to
ask goalkeeper Antonio Pérez what
to expect from our Mexican soccer adventure
and, in particular, from the upcoming Clásico
Tapatío. "If you want to know Mexican
soccer better, it's a passion that affects
everyone," he tells me. "The people here
live soccer. This week people everywhere
will be saying we can't lose this game.
They ask you for tickets, for all sorts
of things. And this is beautiful. Es
lo caliente del Clásico."
After spending three days in Puerto Vallarta
-- and enjoying some much-needed beach
downtime after surviving the Final Four
pressure-cooker -- we pick up our car and
begin climbing toward Guadalajara, meeting
the aforementioned American drifter while
grabbing lunch in the town of Compostela.
He informs us that he was shot six times
in the chest last year (pulling up his
T-shirt to show us the scars), that he
recently spent time in a Wisconsin jail
and that he has been hitch-hiking his way
through Mexico for five months on his way
toward (he hopes) Puerto Escondido. "Be
careful out there," he says with a jagged-toothed
smile. Amazingly, he doesn't brandish a
rusty knife on us, and we hightail it back
to our car.
(This seems like a good time to point
out that the single scariest moment of
our entire trip came courtesy of a Yank
and not a Mexican. It became a running
joke that we'd be warned by well-intentioned
Mexican journalists not to go near supposedly "dangerous" hardcore
soccer fans, only to find that we were
universally welcomed with open arms.)
Originally I was disappointed to miss
Mexico's biggest rivalry game, Chivas-América,
due to my work schedule the previous month,
but the delicious venom that's flowing
in Guadalajara more than makes up for it.
I begin to understand when we visit the
Chivas training ground, where hundreds
of fans have gathered for practice, and
I sit down with Jaime (El Tubo) Gómez and
his brother Pascual. Jaime was the
Chivas goalkeeper during the club's campeonísimo period
of the 1950s, when the club won seven Mexican
league titles, while Pascual was a well-known
sports journalist.
"I played 43 games against Atlas, and
I only lost nine!" says Jaime, now 78,
who wears thick glasses, two hearing aids
and a white mustache framing his ever-present
smile. "I would always fight with the Atlas
fanatics. It was personal, and for them
with me!" With that El Tubo pulls out a
black-and-white photograph and tells me
the story of what happened on the day in
1955 when Chivas was thrashing Atlas 5-0.
While the referee was busy at the other
end of the field, Jaime sat down in front
of his goalpost, pulled out a small book
and began reading during the middle
of the game. Right in front of the
Atlas fans! "A classic is read better during un
Clásico!" he says, giving me
a copy of the famous picture, and I can't
stop laughing. I tell him it's the most
creative taunt I've ever seen by a player
in any sport.
I learn plenty more from 70-year-old Pascual:
that "Chivas" (Goats) was originally an
insult for Guadalajara players from Atlas
fans that CD Guadalajara decided to embrace
instead; that Guadalajara's policy allowing
only Mexican-born players is so strict
that even Pelé was once forbidden
from playing in a Chivas shirt for half
of a friendly; and that the rivalry with
Atlas was even more bitter 50 years ago. "If
you lost to Atlas, the majority of Chivas
fans wouldn't leave their houses the next
day because of the embarrassment," he recalls.
Not that much has changed, however.
The next day we gather at the Olympic Fountain
on the Calzada Independencia four hours
before kickoff. For the next two hours
we witness a remarkable scene as hundreds
of Chivas supporters, almost all of them
teenagers, assemble around the fountain,
traffic and police be damned.
It's red-and-white
madness as diehards stand atop moving buses,
blowing whistles and banging drums and
waving giant flags in the late-afternoon
sun. Half of them, it seems, ask us to
buy them beer. The throng even includes
a group of Chivas fans from Los Angeles
("Call me Ernie..." "Call me Shrek...")
who've flown in for the occasion. At the
commander's signal we all begin walking
as one, a Chivas parade advancing the two
kilometers down the Calzada Independencia
toward the Estadio Jalisco.
The game itself is a blur, partly due
to the non-stop adrenalin of cheering with
my new pals and partly due to the doble
cerveza that I finish early in the
first half. True, there's an element of
danger in the air -- as I'm walking a wave
of young Atlas fans advances toward us
menacingly, and a SWAT cop wearing a helmet,
visor and flak jacket pushes me out of
the way -- but once we're inside it's all
about the soccer. Well, the soccer and
the songs. I recognize one of them from
my days in Argentina and join in:
Olé, Olé, Olé
Olé, Olé, Olé, Olá
Olé, Olé, Olé
Cada día te quiero más! (Each
day I love you more!)
Soy ... soy de Chivas (I'm ... I'm with Chivas)
Es un sentimiento (It's a feeling)
No puedo parar (I cannot stop)
Olé, Olé, Olé...
After a scoreless first half Chivas takes
control, and when Javier Rodríguez makes
it 2-0 in the final minutes the crowd goes
nuts. The guy with a Mohawk next to me
falls over while celebrating. Someone nearby
sets off a smoke bomb. And while I can't
make out the words to the song we're singing,
I'm still jumping and waving my hands back
and forth like an idiot.
In other words, things couldn't be better.
Not long after Simon and Jon-Claud rejoin
me for the drive back to the hotel -- they'd
spent the game with the photographers on
the field -- another car full of Chivas
fans sees me and begins the chant all over
again. Bo-FO! Bo-FO! Bo-FO! ...
***************
Mexican Soccer Lesson #2: To Understand
Mexican Rivalries You Must Understand Ardido.
As the teams leave the field at the end
of the Clásico Tapatío I
notice a familiar sight. Not one of the
players shakes hands. Nobody trades his
jersey.
I've seen this before, of course,
whenever the U.S. and Mexican national
teams meet each other. When I ask my friend,
the journalist Miguel Ángel Briseño of Reforma,
about it, he mentions the word ardido --
a sort of rageful pride or courage that's
common among Mexican soccer players.
For years I have tried to understand why
great players like Rafael Márquez would
spear Cobi Jones with his head in
the final moments of Mexico's 2002 World
Cup elimination, or why Oswaldo Sánchez would
try to cut down Eddie Johnson following
the U.S.'s second goal in Phoenix last
February. Now, after watching the way the
Chivas and Atlas players respond to their
rivalry, I have a much clearer idea. Later,
I track down what Sánchez told Mexican
reporters about the incident in Phoenix.
"It gives me a lot of courage," he said, "because
they make fun of us and enjoy it. It makes
me angry that they make fun of me, it's
true, and much more that they make fun
of my country. Therefore I gave him a kick
of ardido (rageful pride)."
Ardido.
I don't have to like the explanation --
nor did coach Hugo Sánchez,
who replied, "one must maintain his form.
I'll speak with him to avoid situations
like this." -- but at least now I understand
the phenomenon. It's not so much about
the Americans (although that's certainly
part of it) as it is about the way Mexican
players treat all their most heated
rivalries.
***************
TOLUCA, APRIL 15
I have named our bug-covered blue Nissan "The
Little Engine That Couldn't," and as we
climb ever so steadily from Guadalajara
into the desert scrub into the mountains
that surround the fantasmagoria of Mexico
City, we often have to turn off the air-conditioning
to squeeze any acceleration out of the
car.
By the time we reach Toluca, some
60 kilometers west of the D.F., strange
noises are escaping from the undercarriage.
But there's no time to worry. We're at
the Estadio Nemesio Diez -- a bandbox sheathed
in corrugated metal, which makes it look
like an oversized Wal-Mart -- for the game
between Toluca and visiting Pachuca, the
hottest team in the Mexican league. Which
brings us to ...
Mexican Soccer Lesson #3: The Model
of the Modern Mexican Fan is Argentine
(With Some Exceptions). First off, let's
be clear: I love Argentine soccer fans.
They're the most passionate supporters
in the world, and they usually turn games
into giant parties. In many ways, then,
I was pleasantly surprised by the influence
Argentine fans have had on their Mexican
counterparts.
I started noticing it in
Monterrey, where the hardcore fans sang
Argentine-style songs the whole game and
ran at breakneck speed toward the goal
fence as a unit whenever Rayados scored.
("They never used to do those things when
I'd come to games 10 years ago," my friend
Pedro told me.)
But there's a downside to the Argentine
influence, too, most notably the tough-guy
posturing and hooligan violence that has
caused Mexican authorities to forbid groups
of visiting fans from acquiring free tickets
to games this season. (It didn't help that
there were 213 arrests at the Chivas-Atlas
game.) Earlier this year came reports that
fans from clubs like Pumas had hired Argentine barra
brava leaders as "consultants" to teach
them everything from terrace chants to
the use of weapons to methods for extorting
money from club directors and players.
Toluca's stadium is also called La Bombonera,
the same name as the famed home of Boca
Juniors, but the Argentine flavor ends
there. "We're original," La Perra Brava,
the chief of the Toluca fans, tells me. "Other
fan groups sing Argentine songs, but ours
are all Mexican. We're nationalists."
Fans
of the Red Devils have their own tradition:
whenever Toluca scores they remove their
shirts and wave them above their heads
for the entirety of the game. "Even the
women?" I ask. "Sometimes! Sometimes! We
have pictures!" says El Diablo Desconocido (The
Unknown Devil), a superfan dressed in a
bright red suit with tails, white gloves,
red-and-black face makeup and a beard and
mustache worthy of Lucifer himself. Alas,
Toluca goes scoreless in a 2-0 defeat,
and El Diablo spends the game insulting
the club president (Rafael Lebrija)
and his disastrous new signing (forward Erwin Ávalos)
from atop his ladder facing the crowd.
This devil is on fire:
They collect 80 pesos for a ticket
and this is what they give us?
Players,
players, I ask you please, to sweat for
the jersey, even though you won't be
champions...
This is what you deserves,
cabrones!
Even the humorless SWAT
cop standing next to me can't help but
crack a smile.
***************
MEXICO CITY, APRIL 16-18
There are few things in life that prepare
you for driving in Mexico City traffic
at night, which may be why Jon-Claud tells
me to "unleash your inner Mexico City cab
driver" for the harrowing ride into town
after the Toluca game. I comply, and suddenly
we're weaving through cars like everyone
else before (mercifully) arriving at the
airport to drop off The Little Engine That
Couldn't at the rental counter.
Maybe it's due to the stress from driving,
or maybe it's something I ate, but I pick
up my first stomach bug the next day, vomiting
in the Zócalo right next to Simon,
who thankfully doesn't take my picture.
But after 16 hours in bed I'm a new man
ready to take on the world, or at least
a tour of the famed Estadio Azteca, home
to the exploits of Diego Maradona and Pelé,
to say nothing of Club América.
The so-called Sacred Colossus of Santa Úrsula
is worth the trip. Visitors can take a
guided tour of the stadium and an on-site
museum devoted to its storied history,
which includes the 1970 and 1986 World
Cups and the legendary players of América,
from Rafael Garza Gutierrez to Cuauhtémoc Blanco.
When our guide leads us onto the field,
I can't help but imagine what it must be
like to walk out here as a U.S. player
for a World Cup qualifier with 105,000
Mexicans screaming their lungs out at me.
But unlike the U.S. players I've spoken
to about the Azteca, which they compare
to the Thunderdome of Mad Max movies, I
don't find the stadium scary at all. As
I learn the next day at a Copa Libertadores
game between América and El Nacional
of Ecuador, the Azteca is an ideal place
to watch soccer in one of the sport's great
cathedrals. Taking advantage of the 50-peso
price for all tickets, more than 60,000
fans show up for a mid-week game, and the
atmosphere is more festive than nearly
any soccer match I have attended in the
United States.
Nowhere is that more the case than behind
the goal, where I meet two 20-year-old
América supporters who teach me
a few new things. First off, much like
the New York Yankees, América takes
pride in being envied for its success. "The
whole world hates us!" one of them says.
Second, unlike the Toluca fans, they embrace
comparisons to their blue-and-yellow brothers
to the south.
"We're the Boca [Juniors]
of Mexico," says the other. "We sing the
whole game" -- good! -- "and we're radicals
like them." (Not so good.) Finally, they're
not happy at all about Blanco's upcoming
transfer to the Chicago Fire. "He was the
symbol of the team, but now he's just a
dog," says one. "When a player is sold
he's no longer part of the team to me."
Right here, as América completes
a 2-1 victory, is the perfect place to
end our Mexican soccer adventure. For after
four games in two weeks, after criss-crossing
the country by plane and car, after experiencing
first-hand the passion for the sport, Mexican-style,
we've come full circle. One of the América
fans says his name is Diego Luna.
"Like the actor from Y Tu Mamá También?" I
ask. "Seriously?"
He pulls out his ID and
shows me. Damned if he isn't speaking the
gospel truth.
I take it as a sign of approval
from above. Whoever's up there must be
a Mexican soccer fan.
