New England Revolution vs. Emelec

Today, the Dowbrigade would like to don his sportswriter
cap and report on the much anticipated showdown between our hometown
New
England
Revolution and the glamour team of the Ecuadorian first division, Emelec.

The
Emelec squad is known locally as "Los Milonarios," mostly
because their fan base is the rich and privileged socioeconomic elites
who rule in any developing country, b and can be seen bombing around in
late-model land rovers, hummers and other armored vehicles. They are true
sports fans, just as much as the poor teeming masses, who pledge allegiance
to Emelec’s cross-town rivals, Barcelona Futbal Club.

The other reason Emelec is known as the Millionaires is their capitalist
roots. Emelec was originally the team of the Empressa Electrica de Ecuador,
the Ecuadorian Electric Company, back in the day when the biggest companies
owned and sponsored sports teams, owned and operated as monopolies the
key companies, in the interest of "national security. Also just like
in the Soviet bloc.

Barcelonistas and Emelecistas hate each other with a cold, consuming familiarity.
They hate each other like the Hatfields and McCoys, like the Capulets and
Montagues, or, dare we say it, like an Ecuadorian echo of the Red Sox
and Yankees.

They compete in every sport imaginable, not just in soccer. These "Sports
Clubs" are veritable sports empires, keriatsu of completive sports,
and the Barcelona – Reelect"classic" is repeated endlessly in
basketball, volleyball, water polo, chess, equestrian events, and Sapos,
an Ecuadorian favorite involving tossing metal slugs into the open mouths
of cast iron frogs.

Thirty years ago we witnessed one of the more obscure iterations of the
Barcelona-Emelec rivalry; American baseball. In those ancient times, while
the Dowbrigade was running roughshod over the Gringo Trail pretending to
do field research in everything from Shamanism to Physical Anthropology,
Ecuador was actually host to one of the many off-season professional minor-sub-minor-miniscule
professional leagues for aspiring American and Latin American ballplayers.  Nowadays,
aspiring major leaguers play their summer ball in Mexico or the Dominican
Republic, or in one of the numerous bus-trip boondocks leagues in Florida,
Texas or Arizona run my the major league clubs.

But in those days a few dozen American teenagers and twenty-somethings
would pack their duffels and head down to steamy Guayaquil, to play in
a two-month, four team league in and around Guayaquil, to crowds of fifty
or a hundred who knew absolutely nothing about America’s passtime, other
than that the mad Gringos running around in the noonday sun were wearing
the uniforms of their favorite teams.  As usual, the games that
garnered the most interest were the "clasicos" – Barcelona-Emelec.

We were
usually in the big city just for the day, ready to retreat, come sundown,
to our cheap rented cabin on the beach 90 minutes from
downtown.
On several
occasions we befriended some of the players, met leaving the stadium,
or at bars nearby.  There was only one real baseball stadium in
Guayaquil in those days.  It was in a gritty neighborhood of home
industries, like car mechanics and seamstresses and cheap TV repairmen,
each operating
out of a small storefront behind which they lived with their families,
near the port. All of the games of all of the teams were held there.
Today there are no real baseball stadiums left in Guayaquil, although
people still play softball in the parks.

It was a strange matchup; a handful of ivy league refugees, ostensibly
doing serious research on a variety of the socioeconomic concerns of
the day, while in reality doing equally serious research on getting fucked
up, laid, and into all sorts of picaresque trouble from which we would
be inevitably ingeniously extricated, on the other a bunch of redneck
jocks from small towns across the South, pursuing their dream of making
it to the Show someday via this weird and wicked foreign city where they
couldn’t speak the lingo or find a decent burger, and where everything
they were seeing all around them on the streets and in the bars, violated
everything they had been taught in their local small town churches and
however much high school they were able to complete before they quit
and entered
the
adolescent American underworld of minor league baseball full time.

We got along famously.  Turns out we were interested in exactly
the same things. American males of a certain age, in the early 70’s,
with Vietnam raging, playing games in foreign fields. They were stuck
there for a couple of months, and we definitely made those months more
fun.  On off days they would come out to the beach.  We ended
up seeing a lot of Emelec and Barcelona baseball.  In those days,
you could smoke grass in the upper levels of the almost empty Guayaquil
baseball stadium.  Of course, in those days they said there was
more grass in the bleachers at Fenway Park than in the outfield. None
of us, as far as we could ascertain, ever made it to the Major
Leagues.

But
getting back to soccer. Emelec vs. the New England Revolution. According
to the big screen TV at the bar of the Guayaquil Hilton Colon, the game
was to be held at Capwell Stadium, Reelect’s home field, fairly fancy
but also in a bad neighborhood, capacity about 30,000. We were sure it
wouldn’t be sold out, as they seemed to have only started publicizing
it during the past few days.

We decided to invite all of the young people from the family we had
been staying with in Guayaquil, nieces and nephews of Norma Yvonne, and
three of them answered the call. Together, the four of us set out for
Capwell Stadium, where none of them in fact had ever been.

After driving around a section of the sprawling city of Guayaquil unfamiliar
to all of us, we finally found Capwell Stadium. Actually, once we found
it, it was hard to miss, although we had to drive around it twice before
we found the main entrance. There was a knot of fifty or a hundred people
milling around the gates, probably trying to get in without paying for
a ticket.

Upon descending from our armored car, our young nephews and niece formed
a phalanx around the doddering Dowbrigade, in an unnecessary attempt
to protect the fresh gringo meat from the the assortment of human carnivores
and vultures circling the area.  We knew, from long experience,
that we could take care of ourself, but the thought was touching.

Imagine our chagrin to discover, when we finally pushed through to the
stadium gates, that they were locked and chained.  Through the barred
entryway we could see that the lights were on the field and that somebody seemed
to be warming up.

What’s going on? Why aren’t they letting anyone into the stadium? we
asked an obviously intoxicated although not staggering sports fan to
our right.

"They say the game is cancelled, that they are just going to play a
scrimmage against the Under-20’s." he answered, obviously annoyed. "We
skipped work and came down from Villa Victoria (a shantytown on the edge
of the metropolis) after we saw the ad on TV."

What?! No way were we going to be rebuffed at the gates just because
some some slimy team official sleazed out of a programmed preseason
match and sent the
subs instead. Not just because the game was closed to the public! Were we public?

We tried to play the press card.

"Listen," we intoned officiously to the beleaguered dude in a sport
coat who was refusing to do so to all of the other vociferous rabble
trapped
on the outside of the chained gates, "We are members of the AMERICAN
PRESS." He looked doubtfully at our three teenaged bodyguards. Doubt
was exactly what we wanted to see.

"Let me talk to the Chief, this could turn into an international incident!"

Reluctantly, he shuffled off to get the head man, whoever that was.
Eventually, a smooth, silver-haired gent in a blue guayabera ambled
over. "What seems to be the problem?" he asked.

"The PROBLEM, my good man, is that we have traveled 10,000 kilometers
to cover this damn game, and now we can’t get into the stadium.  This
date was announced over a month ago in Boston, and my editor cleared
it directly with team officials.  Do you know how much it cost me
to get down here?"

In our right hand we were waving around our M.I.T. Tennis Club season
pass, never stopping long enough for him to read it. "What kind of an
operation is this? If I go back without the story, I’ll lose my job!"

We know from experience, both in English and Spanish, how much barely-controlled
hysteria to mix into our rants in order to get the forces of order and
authority to give us what we want rather than risk an incident or ugly
scene.  It worked again at the Capwell, and suddenly the Dowbrigade,
as well as his three assistants, were through the gates and out on the
field of an eerily empty stadium.

The lights were indeed up and two clearly differentiated teams were
loosening up, kicking a bunch of balls back and forth, stretching. Other
than a dozen or so coaches and team officials knotted around clipboards
on the sidelines, the stadium was empty. The stands were still littered
with ripped programs, beer cans and food trash
from the latest "Clasico" in soccer between Emelec and Barcelona, two days earlier.

Which was probably the reason that Emelec decided at the last minute
to send the sub-20 rather than the varsity, being in the midst of a hotly
contested local championship, as well as being underhanded as their four
best players were away with the Ecuadorian national team preparing for world
cup elimination contests with Paraguay (5-2, Ecuador) and Peru (2-2 tie).
But how Ecuadorian, to lure the Gringos down with promises of top level
competition, reserve the stadium, advertise the game on two continents,
and then pull a bait and switch at the last minute!

After wandering around the sidelines for a few moments and noting that
the athletes seemed distracted and preoccupied, we were politely invited
to take seats in the stands.  We had our choice of 30,000. We landed
at midfield, in the expensive seats, 8 or 10 rows up.

There were three
other people in the section, along with maybe a thousand empty seats.
On one row a nattily dressed gringo with a corporate earnestness was in deep
conversation with a middle-aged Latin Patriarch who was looking graciously amused
by everything the gringo was saying. We couldn’t hear if they were speaking in
English or Spanish.

A few rows behind them a curly haired, trim, 40-something owlish gentleman
sat taking notes on a plain pad of paper. We sat down between the three
of them, while our bodyguards remained down at field level, hands hanging
from the loose link fence separating the field from the stands. Apparently
they deemed us safe enough, alone in the high-priced seats with a couple
of anonymous gringos.

Down on the field, the game had begun.  Coach Steve Nichols seemed
to be pissed off as he shouted instructions from right in front of our
seats.  Of course, he always, seems pissed off, on TV. Never smiles.

Three minutes into the game, Shalrie Joseph, a Revolution midfielder
and rising star in MLS is thrown out for calling the referee "Stupid."
We don’t know if he said it in Spanish or English, but it hardly matters
as the Spanish is "Stupido" which is close enough. However, it’s not a
red card – the Revs can replace him.  He is just thrown out of the
game. To a soccer purist a highly irregular move highlighting the fact
that this is not an official game.

From that point on the referee in question is know as "Stupid," in the
stands and on the Rev’s bench, as in "Stupid got THAT one right" or "Where
was Stupid on that foul!?"

Down on the field the first goal had been scored, by the Rev’s creative
midfielder from Uruguay, Pepe Cancela. In the early going, it looked
like a case of men against boys, but neither team seemed crisp.

It turns out that the corporate-looking gringo was Craig
Tornberg, general manager of the Revs, and the Ecuadorian was the President
of the sub-20 Emelec team, last minute replacement for the real Emelec
squad. Turns out that the switch was pulled a mere two days before, at
the big Classic with Barcelona. After having their carefully-laid plans
dashed following the inevitable nightmare of moving a team of 30 athletes and
coaches to South America, Tornberg was probably suicidal, so when Emelec
threw him the sub-20 bone, in the form of this gracious Guayaquil gentleman
he "just happened to run into" at the Classic, he grabbed it like drowning
man grabs a life preserver.

Yet he refused to badmouth his hosts, or the general equatorial lassitude,
in any way shape or form.  As an experienced traveler and survivalist,
we had to respect his politic reluctance to
criticize the locals, but as an erstwhile reporter we had to try. Tornberg never
rose to the bait.

When we asked him whether the team had gotten their planned work in
during the five days they had spent in Ecuador thus far, his answer was
a terse "No," but he refused to elaborate, preferring to draw our attention
to Nichols attempts to insert rookie Michael
Parkhurst from Wake Forest at central defense, a key spot in the Revs’
three-back alignment.

Our notes indicate that the second goal was scored on a counterattack,
but we have no idea by whom. As in, we don’t even remember which team
scored. The performance on the field was desultory, the coach still looked
pisssed off, and the American players looked as though they just wanted
to go home.

The American press reports gave the score as a 2-2 tie, but our Ecuadorian
assistants swear the never saw the second Revolution goal and that the
local teenagers beat the foreign mercenaries 2-1. Nobody seemed to care
about the score at the time.

The second half of the game made the first part seem like world cup
competition. Passes were off, balls uncontested, a serious lack of "garra"
(aggressiveness), lazy balls through the area with no one on the other
end. During halftime the directors of the two teams talked player transfer
values in a sort of multinational athletic meat market. The Revolution
actually had an Ecuadorian player once, Ariel Graziani, but he is back
in Ecuador, leading the first division in scoring.  In addition,
two of the Rev’s all-time stars, Joe Max Moore and Alexi Lalas were "on
loan" to Emelec during one star-crossed season back in the 90’s.

After the game we asked Thornberg for a quote.  Here it is: "I
though we played well in the first half, although I was a little disappointed
in the final result.  Actually, we are just happy to have managed
to find a competitive match.  Coach Nichols got a chance to try
some of the new players in different positions, which was good."

On our way out of the stadium we finally got a chance to talk to the
quiet, curly-haired note-taker behind us.  Turns out it was Frank
Dell’Appa, the Globe’s excellent
soccer writer, who was traveling with the team. We talked, briefly,
about soccer, Guayaquil, and other parts of Ecuador he should see before
leaving.

Outside, it was pouring rain.  One member of our posse went off
into the tropical deluge looking for a taxi while we huddled under a
narrow roof by the main gate. He came back a few minutes later in a muffin
tin on wheels. The vehicle had been cannibalized and rebuilt so many
times it was impossible to determine its original make or model. It was
as light-weight and dented as a kicked-around garbage can.

However, the real kicker was that the car was an example of third-world
environmental ingenuity – it was eco-friendly. The driver, a guzzled
veteran of Guayaquil’s mean streets, had recently converted it to run
on cooking gas, which is sold in big metal tanks and subsidized by the
populist Ecuadorian government. After an $800 conversion from gas-guzzling
internal combustion to natural gas burning, a $6 tank of cooking gas
take the taxi as far as $30-$40 worth of gasoline. Of course, it is highly
illegal, and probably dangerous to boot. Our kind of ride.

As we watched the rain streak the leaky windows of the cracker-box taxi,
hosing down the grimy streets of the great equatorial metropolis, we
crossed another item off our preseason tour checklist. We had seen the
Rev’s in action, albeit against inferior opposition. But it was an accomplishment
just getting in there, both for us and for the team. A night to be remembered,
and to remember contests past, and to appreciate the bittersweet drama
that is the sporting life of a true fan.