“Messi!” I called out from the living room the other afternoon, prompting Mary, who was in the computer room nearby, to say, “Who’s messy? Me?”
“Not you. Lionel.”
“Lionel’s messy?”
“Not messy at all — he just put a penalty kick neatly into the upper right corner of Croatia’s cage!”
Pity that Costa Rica, Mexico, and Ecuador didn’t get to the knockout round of 16 this year. Had any of those teams done so, that would have been a story, there being many from those countries who live here, and there are many here also from Colombia and Ireland, which didn’t qualify. It’s exciting, nevertheless, the World Cup, though I am mindful of what Duvan Castro said during the 2014 competition — Colombia and Costa Rica each made it to the quarterfinals that year, if you remember — to wit, that it was a tossup as to whether the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) or the Catholic Church was more corrupt.
There will be World Cup games in this country — as well as in Canada and Mexico — four years hence, by which time soccer may finally have come into its own in America, whose team made the knockout round in Qatar. Not enough scoring has been the chief beef, and perhaps not quite enough violence to suit red meat-eating couch potatoes, though if they would relax and enjoy it, soccer, or futbol, if you will, can be just as arresting as football — even more so, precisely because its explosive moments are less frequent, and because of that all the more exhilarating. And in tight games, as has been the case many times at the World Cup, just about every moment is tense.
Frankly, there is little question that soccer here, the games that have been played by adults since the early 1970s (beginning with Paul Sapienza’s United Nations team that dominated Islandwide), and since 2009 by our high schoolers, who make the playoffs year in, year out, has been East Hampton’s pre-eminent sport. And within a few years, I think, there will be strong girls teams at the high school too.
As for the men’s leagues I’ve covered, first it was Costa Rica that ruled the roost, then Mexico, then Ireland, then Colombia, and now Ecuador as immigration waves from those countries succeeded each other. All those teams had outstanding players, Sapienza, Enrique Garcia, Peter Moreno, Enrique Leon, Carlos Vargas, Jorge Contreras, Joel Gomez, Luis Villaplana, Luis Correa, Diego Marles, Cesar Galea, Antonio Ibarra, Gehider Garcia, Julian and Carlos Barahona, Jorge Almansa, and Donald Martinez among them.
They’ve brought the World Cup home every year, as far as I’m concerned.