Soccer as the north burned
Chaos postpones one match & complicate fans' exit from another. PLUS: The Conca-catch-up!
Sports are not important. It might seem like a hot take coming from a guy planning his week around seeing a team from Belize get shelled in a second-tier Concacaf club competition, but deep down we know it’s true.
We love sports. We love soccer. But when we really search our hearts, that phrase about games being “the most important, least important thing” rings accurate.
We care so much. It feels so good to celebrate a win. We learn about ourselves and each other through soccer. And, perhaps best of all, the game can be a wonderful distraction from all the other stuff that actually is important.
In Juarez this week, residents were deprived the joyful diversion by real-life interference. A prison riot Thursday afternoon sparked chaos in the city, with gangs affiliated with two cartels fighting for power and supply routes into the U.S. — the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel — running amok.
Radio hosts doing a live broadcast outside a Little Caesars were shot, as were other civilians at the restaurant. The night would end with nine confirmed deaths.
Members of the gangs threw molotov cocktails into convenience stores and supermarkets, including some locations of chain owned by FC Juarez owner Alejandra de la Vega.
Without the chance to guarantee security at Saturday’s Bravos game against Pachuca, the match was postponed.
Friday night it was Baja California’s grisly ‘turn’ for narco-chaos, with transit vehicles burned not just in Tijuana but even in smaller cities like Rosarito and Toluca, meant to show residents that even their pueblito is in the snarled grasp of organized crime.
Rather than missing out on the distraction, Tijuanenses had to put to the test just how good a diversion soccer really is.
They saw a hell of a game, Puebla answering every Xolos punch with a counter-punch including Jozy Altidore’s debut goal in Mexico and a 99th-minute equalizer from Israel Reyes to close out a 3-3 draw.
By the time they filed out onto the boulevard, a car was burning in the casino parking lot used for the stadium, and many realized the communal taxis they rely on to get home from the stadium every other weekend wouldn’t be coming, with the burned-out vehicles forming blockades and discouraging transit workers from continuing to operate.
My friends in the city, many of whom are the type to celebrate even a point for Xolos on Tijuana’s famous ‘Revu’ or at other nightlife spots around town, headed home, settling in for a night of Netflix and doomscrolling.
The next day several of them were putting up videos laughing about being back to the routine of having birria in the morning.
Whether you view it as thanks to a concerning plethora of opportunities to practice or because of a real understanding of how to restore normalcy (earlier this month cities in Jalisco and Guanajuato were under similar siege, reportedly because of an attempt by authorities to arrest Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación leader Ricardo Ruiz), things were calm in both border towns all weekend.
The calm will be false for a while, of course. How can you not worry about more chaos being sewn when organized crime has been virtually allowed to run free for decades, feeding North America and Europe’s insatiable appetite for drugs?
But what choice is there? Stay inside and live in fear? Or go out and live? Juarez did the right thing pushing the game. Xolos didn’t know things would flare up like they did. But the government and law enforcement need to work to make sure atmospheres are safe from violence of all types. It must be safe to go to the stadium.
Sports may not actually be important. Soccer may not really matter. But it’s one of the best expressions we have of who we are: Our culture, our likes, our passion for who we are and the places that made us that way.
Those spaces aren’t perfect, but they are ours.
Around Liga MX
América smashed Pumas, 3-0 with Pumas ending a week that started with a 6-0 loss to Barcelona with a big defeat against a crosstown rival. The Barcelona trip can’t have helped matters, but Pumas are suddenly in a must-win match Thursday at Atletico San Luis. Pumas have only one win so far this season and it didn’t come after Dani Alves’ arrival…
Cruz Azul had a miserable Sunday at the Estadio Azteca. A point against Toluca looked to be in hand until a classic, weird Liga MX sequence unfolded as the match ticked into stoppage time.