octubre: El Clasico

El Clasico - the most anticipated futbol game in Mexico - Guadalajara "Chivas" VS Mexico City's "America"

Rosendo (one of Sarah's connections through work) invited us to go to the game and without hesitation I was saying "yes" without knowing which team to cheer for, when the game started, or how we were getting to D.F. for the game... hey, we're in Mexico and I finally comfortable with not knowing the details.

Sarah and I went to meet Rosendo in Cuernavaca. We quickly realized that he and about 40 some other university friends had rented a bus to go to the game and that they were America fans decked out in yellow shirts and jerseys. Turns out no one really knew the time we were leaving which is why we waited to leave Cuernavaca for about 3 hours and showed up to the game in Mexico City about 2 hours early.

We arrived in the very cold Mexico City for the 8pm game on Sunday night, parked the bus and walked to Estadio Azteca. We half-enthusiastically looked at some of the jerseys to buy but decided against spending the money. We thought about having some street food, but thought better of that too for sake of our weak foreign stomachs. Then we got in line and made our way into the biggest stadium in Mexico. I'm glad that someone warned us about it being colder there even though it is so close, a detail worth knowing, because it wasn't just cold - it was freezing. Sarah looked like she was about to go skiing and I was a little Stay-Puff with a couple layers under my big white fleece and a borrowed America jersey from one of the other Uni students. And we were still chilled.






Rosendo, Arim (one of the other students), Sarah and I ended up in the porra section. Like the student section at collegiate sporting events, there is a similar section at futbol games (called the "porra" here in Mexico). It is for the people wearing body paint or head-to-toe team colors. It is for the people who never sit down. It is for the people who have sore throats for days from cheering too loudly for a few hours straight. It is for the crazy fans that inevitably get into a few futbol fights (think the cliche Irish mob fights at rugby games). Yeah, we were in the middle of the porra and our seats were awesome - it was better to look on the field than to watch the jumbotron screen!

The game moved quickly and beautifully. I can't describe how effortless the players make it look. Even Sarah, who claims to be not much of a soccer fan/expert, said that it was graceful. For all of you futbol fans reading this right now, it was incredible and worth checking out next time you travel to somewhere that has a team (outside of the U.S. - we're a bit behind on the world's love affair with futbol).






Final score: America 2 - Chivas 1

I even have a sweet photo of America's first goal (below). To the right (our right) of the goal: the pink, blurry thing is the ball, the guy in white is the Chivas keeper, and the guy in yellow at the bottom and to the right is the one who scored. Not too bad, huh?



Sure enough, a brawl broke out towards the end of the game. Why? Who knows. All I know is that Sarah and I (being led by Rosendo) kept moving our way safely away from the brawl. It was a strange thing too - it moved often and quickly. Sweeping from one side of the porra and then clearing its way to the other. It was also strange that the riot police on hand for the porra section seemed to take a good 10 minutes or so to break it up.

At the end of the game, I expected to leave the stadium as normal only to find that we were blocked IN the stadium by more riot police. I asked Rosendo what was going on and he told me that we have one of the rowdiest porras in Mexico and they have to make sure that everyone (especially the opponent's fans) have left before letting us out so that there are less fights outside. Fair enough. But after enough waiting and after enough beers, some of the crowd got a bit restless. One drunk and shirtless fan started crowd-jumping, barely missing the barb wire near the exit. People started filling in the exits and aisles until we were a creature of a crowd that moved and seemed to breathe in unison out of lack of space if nothing else. When one person shoved through our body-blob, everyone felt smushed.



All around it was quite an experience and a lot of fun. We didn't get back into Cuernavaca until about 2am, but I would still do it again in a heartbeat. A Mexican futbol fan is born.