Futbol, Otra Vez

Our Sunday night soccer games have been a great time - one of the highlights of every week. This week the passers-through seemed particularly numerous and particularly dedicated to walking through the game at critical moments, although for whatever reason there weren't quite so many kids riding power-wheels. Embarrassingly, I almost hit a gentleman on crutches with an errant long-ball. It was an accident, I swear, but I guess I need to brush up on my field awareness. Around the time we would usually quit a group of young guys showed up looking for a game, so we played a "reto," or challenge. New name, old concept: one team plays another to two goals while the the other watches, and the winner stays on. I think we old folks did ourselves proud, but we didn't last for very many switches.

In general, I was a little surprised by soccer here. I somehow - foolishly - pictured soccer balls flying from foot to foot in every alleyway, in every park, on every corner. This, fortunately for traffic, isn't the case. In fact, it seems there isn't actually a whole lot of pick-up soccer being played. Now and again we'll see a few people kicking around in the plaza next door, and on Sundays there are sometimes one or two (and, today, four!) people willing to join in. There are, though, organized leagues that play at a couple stadiums across town, and presumably in other villages, so maybe that's where real action is. I suppose if there is enough organized play, and if the sport is taken seriously enough by most people, pick-up games aren't really as necessary. Still, I'm glad that we've found a regular group.

What people do for sure do, however, is watch soccer. Many of the stalls in markets and some of the convenience stores that dot the city have televisions set up, which are normally tuned to a variety of shows - telenovelas, lucha libre, kids programming, etc. But, when there's a game on, almost all of them switch over and small clusters of people, vendors and customers alike, pause to watch the action. And it's not just the markets. Walking to buy tortillas today - a word to the wise, the tortilleria is closed on Sundays - we saw a huge crowd gathered on the sidewalk around an electronics store, every TV of which was tuned to a Cruz Azul game. (They seem to be a heavily favored, though by no means local, team.) It's fun to see such enthusiasm - and also such seriousness, akin to Americans watching their home football or baseball team.