In March 2007 I did fly in to Deerfield Beach, Fl, for a position interview as Application Engineer. The company troubleshoots and commisions water desalinization plants in the Caribeean, mainly Bahamas. It is a small team. The boss, O., is originally from Honduras, but is married to an American and has lived for a score of years in the States.
The interview was held in Friday, and decided to stay for the weekend, which turned to be a pain in the back, as my plain on Sunday got cancelled and I ended up stranded in Charlotte, SC at the Hilton Hotel. I could not make it to work on next day. We were just by mid-March and because of this incovenience and my need to change status to a work visa early in January (for which I had to travel for a few days to Madrid) I got only 24 hours left of my vacation leave for the rest of the year. So I got this blunt and damned letter from my current employer at the time, as a warning, accusing me of being work absent, which upset me pretty much.
Anyhow, that Saturday, O. offered a few tickets to go to a soccer game, Honduras vs. El Salvador. First of all, it was sort of funny that both countries go to the States for a friendly game and, secondly, it startled me the security precaution, will all the police being around and dull-countenance checkings at the entrance. About 1 hour before the game, the parking lot was crowded with cars and people, everyone drinking beer and eating at the rear, having the trunk opened and playing load music. Of course, we were doing the same. I said something like "Oh, all this ambient is nice", but I really meant it is nice and interesting to see, all this cultural display. O. replied to me "Really?". Later, the match was boring.
In a would-be collection of short stories of football (which you could write or shot), the account of the games that foreran the so-called the soccer war between Hunduras and El Salvador could be first. I would name it Amelia, after the young Salvadoran lady who killed herself in the aftermath of the first game in Tegucigalpa (1 - 0, Honduras). It ran 1969, and both teams contended for a place in the final round of the World Cup Mexico 1970. A suggestive and entertaining telling of it is in Kapuscinski which, without being its best, retains all his wit and style and marvellous attraction ("the soccer war lasted one hundred hours. Its victims: 6,000 dead, more than 12,000 wounded. Fifty thousand people lost their homes and fields. Many villages were destroyed").
The second story could be set in current time, and show some frivolity or naughtiness or scandal or true love: Pique and Shakira, Beckham and Victoria, the religious Kaka and spouse, Cristiano Ronaldo secret's, the soooo romantic kiss of Casillas to Carbonero at the end of the World Cup in South Africa or, even, You an Me, the adventures of a couple, Rivery and Benzema, roaming Paris la nuit. A nice plot could be set in an up-class whore house where girls tend to throw lies to clients about their connections with the high society meaning, of course, the soccer-player class.
A third story would refresh the epic game of Uruguay and Obdulio Varela in Maracana (1950) against Brazil and a mass of 200,000 (?!!) hauling beasts. The great players of today do not bear special names. I like, tough, those old soccer players, always carrying a distinctive nickname. Obdulio Varela was known as "The Black Boss".
Of most interest could be the terrible stories of Sindelar, "the Papier-Mache man" and Eduard Streltsov, known as "the Soviet Pele". (I think this comment was made by Karpov). Streltsov was a handsome, young man, physically strong, but aficionated to drinks, orgies and girls. Committed several and varied slip-ups, but the unforgivable mistake was to become intimate with the daughter of a very wicked and influencial Politburo woman (Iekaterina Furtseva). Later on, he was accused of raping a 20-year old girl, and outcasted in the Gulag for 5 years. He died in 1990, throat cancer. It is said that that 20-year old girl was seen bringing him flowers to the tomb.
The Austrian Mathias Sindelar was the Wunderteam star and a extraordinary player, in spite of his squalid constitution. Jewish origins (at least, according to Gestapo). Austrian and German teams were unified at some point in 1938, months before the World Cup in France. Sindelar woudn't play and keep throwing pretensions about it. In April, Austria was already anexionated to German and both teams played as "celebration", with a written script. Sindelar was a heartsore bluff during the whole match until in the 70-minute, he unconcealed his unbearable distressed and did score (2 - 1 Austria). He made a whole fuss about it, celebrating and dancing in front of the Nazi authorities. Inmediately after it, he became a symbol for the Austrians who do not accept the German Anschluss.
On Jan 23, 1939 he and his Italian wife were found dead in their bed.
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