🧉🤝 What my year of interviewing Argentines taught me about male friendship

Plus: I look back on some favorites as we wrap 2023

When Argentina dominated the soccer world in 2022, I didn’t realize it would dominate my working life in 2023.

Clearly, I’m Concacaf-first, but this newsletter only makes up a certain percentage of my income each year. The rest comes from stories I pitch to or am assigned by other media outlets.

For a number of reasons, the biggest being Lionel Messi arriving to these shores, I ended up talking to a whole lot of Argentines this year.

I talked with Thiago Almada about being part of the Argentina team that won the World Cup and why he feels it’s so important to return to his neighborhood, Fuerte Apache, as often as possible. I spoke with Lucho Acosta about paradoxically getting more and less attention during his MVP season thanks to Lionel Messi’s arrival. I talked to Alan Velasco, to Álvaro Barreal, to Cristian Espinoza.

Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Rodrigo De Paul show their love for Uruguay’s Luis Suarez (Photo by Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

Over and over, they’d talk about how important a certain teammate or a coach or even friends back home were. Even with me, an outsider, they’d use nicknames, tell me they miss them. They shared times when they were struggling and were lifted by a friend.

When I wrote a piece about the Argentine asado tradition, some readers seemed to think it was a bit silly to romanticize the act. We do have smoked meat in Texas, you know.

But what the asado is about is unstructured time with your friends, time that is by nature somewhat boring. That time then is filled with conversation, sometimes joking but often, as the time passes and the red wine flows, getting serious and bringing up topics that it feels good to discuss with someone else.

While I made strong and lasting friendships with Argentines as early as 2015, I first encountered those bonds being articulated in 2017 when Americas Quarterly editor Brian Winter memorialized a group of pals killed in a terrorist attack while on a trip to New York. Winter described the bonds of the victims’ friendship and how it reminded him of his own time in Argentina.

“They were also open about their struggles, sometimes shockingly so,” Winter wrote of his crew.

While I’m fortunate to have many friends, this doesn’t describe many of my relationships. It definitely doesn’t describe me.

Born in Kansas, I maintain a somewhat midwestern temperament and struggle to reach out to ask a potentially uncomfortable question. I’m ready to help when needed, but rarely offer without being asked, lest I cross a boundary one would rather not have breached.

Last week, I thought about what I wrote after we lost Grant Wahl, that he was more ready to be a friend to me than I ever was ready to believe one of my writing heroes would be my friend. It occured to me that he, too, benefitted from seeing those Argentine relationships. He learned to break out of the Midwestern conventions of not wanting to bother. He’d ask the tough questions and, when necessary, he’d stir the pot as well.

And, so I’ve tried to become a better friend to the men in my life, knowing when you offer friendship, it gets returned.

Sometimes that’s organizing a happy hour, sending a gift card to someone who’s been having a rough one, suggesting (and then actually following up on) a coffee shop hang with a fellow work-from-homer, or insisting some soccer friends continue the very dumb tradition of going to the Frisco Bowl.

We met the coffee mascots.

What I learned in my year of interviewing Argentines is that often it’s about getting a little uncomfortable and making that leap, sending the text, asking a question that would be easier left unsaid.

They don’t have it all figured out, and Lord knows I don’t either, but there’s more we can learn from Argentina than simply how to assemble a world-championship soccer team.

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Some 2023 faves

This will be the last newsletter of the year as I rest and recharge with the family during Christmas. After all, I need to be prepared for a 2024 that will bring the CNL Final Four (hopefully including an in-person, subscriber-only event in the Dallas area), the W Gold Cup, the Copa América, the biggest Concacaf club competition ever and much, much more.

Yes, premium subscribers, that means we’ll have to wait until January to Conca-catch-up on the Honduran championship, the jaunty marimba and much more.

Here’s some stuff I loved writing this year:

For this newsletter:

🇺🇸🇲🇽 'I learned how beautiful the game is, but how cruel the game can be also' - Rafael Baca knows where he's from & where he's going

Just a few weeks ago I published this story I’d long wanted to tell about what Rafa Baca endured and overcame to become a Liga MX champion. I’m very thankful he agreed to chat for as long as he did.

🇸🇽 Meet Gerwin Lake, Sint Maarten's all-time leading scorer who also handles logistics

Sort of a classic Getting CONCACAFed profile, tracking down the top scorer in the CNL and learning he has a pretty rigorous schedule, getting up and working, then training and still taking the vacation days needed to play for Sint Maarten.

🇬🇹 Guatemala's secret weapon? A YouTuber in Northern California

This one also is extremely in ‘my lane’. With Guatemala hot during the Gold Cup, I asked myself, ‘How’d they find some of these guys?’ and was somewhat surprised by the answer. It didn’t hurt that Juan couldn’t have been nicer when I asked for his time.

🇲🇽 What does Mexico's second division want to be?

🌹🏆 Will Concacaf's new W Gold Cup structure be enough to push women's soccer forward?

Two stories, one with my former Striker Texas teammate

Theo Lloyd-Hughes

, that brought a number of voices together to help readers understand big topics: What the hell is happening with the Mexican second division, and will pro/rel come back? What is Concacaf’s new women’s football structure and is it going to work?

You found the answers thanks to people who supported Getting CONCACAFed’s reporting!

🐐 Nine potential future headlines about Lionel Messi in Concacaf

And to contrast those deep dives, there’s this goofy bit.

I resolve to do more silly stuff in 2024.

Elsewhere…

Thanks for clicking over to other places that pay for my writing and allow me to be a full-time soccer writer focusing on the Concacaf region.

At ESPN, I loved the asado story mentioned above, the piece on St. Louis CITY’s debut that looked at what the new MLS team will mean to a city that already loved soccer and the article on Haiti’s women’s team before their playoff matches in New Zealand.

Over at the MLS site, that Almada profile turned out really well, as did this one on Cucho Hernandez’s evolution (into MLS Cup champion and Colombia international, it turns out), and how MLS played a role in Cyle Larin and Taty Castellanos’ big years in La Liga.

And for the big Leagues Cup project, I talked to a few musicians including Soccer Moses for a story on Nashville vs. Miami in a musical sense, did a nice bit from Columbus on the city’s new place in the U.S.-Mexico rivalry and wrote about the Messi murals, among other Miami cultural fixtures.

All in all, I wrote a ton of stuff this year that I’m proud of. I hope to do the same next year - with more video and broadcast work mixed in.

If you’re an editor or producer, get in touch! If you’re a fan, tell outlets you want them to get in touch!

…after I take next week off, of course.

Be well, and have a great holiday season. See you in 2024.