In their dreams
Jorge Facundo D’Elia has a bright cousin. Lots of smarts, lots of ambition.
So much so, in fact, that she now finds herself at Yale, studying graphic design. It was in New Haven, Conn., one night a few weeks ago that D’Elia’s cousin was surfing the Internet and came across the Galaxy’s website.
It mentioned an open tryout scheduled for early February. She thought of Jorge, back home in Guatemala, yearning to be a professional soccer player. She e-mailed him. He agreed. She signed him up.
And so on Thursday, Jorge D’Elia made the seven-hour journey from Guatemala City to Los Angeles via Miami, carrying with him a pair of bright yellow and green soccer boots and a dream.
“I just wanted to be here and see the Home Depot Center,” D’Elia said.
It wasn’t David Beckham who lured him to Carson. It was Carlos “Pescadito” Ruiz and Guillermo “Pando” Ramirez, Galaxy stars of the past.
Ruiz scored the goal that won the Galaxy its 2002 Major League Soccer championship. Ramirez scored the goal that won the team the 2005 title. D’Elia dreams the dream.
Can he be the third Guatemalan player to lead L.A. to a championship?
There was only one way to find out.
The 20-year-old was one of 800 players who showed up Saturday morning for a one-hour chance to show what he could do in a seven-a-side game watched closely by Galaxy coaches.
The games took place on six fields, running continuously from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The players came from around the world, with more than 20 countries represented. Some were there to make the roster. Some were there only to say they once tried out for David Beckham’s team.
Some were there for more devious reasons.
There was a postman from Blackpool in England. A nurse from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. A storeowner from Cadiz in Spain. A student from Guadalajara.
They came from far and wide. From the Cayman Islands and the Netherlands. From Australia and Japan. From Sweden and from Trinidad.
In the almost surreal world in which the Galaxy finds itself since Beckham’s $250-million signing last month, Saturday was just a foretaste of things to come.
Alexi Lalas was pleased by the turnout but also a bit saddened.
“It’s pretty much what we expected in terms of the level of play and the individual ability,” the Galaxy’s president and general manager said. “There are a couple of potential players out there.
“What’s a little disappointing to me, but not unexpected, is that you can be a bad soccer player, OK, and you might not be the fastest or you might not be the most skilled, but don’t show up here and be out of shape.
“I mean, some of the beer guts that we see and guys who after 10 minutes are huffing and puffing, that’s embarrassing to the Galaxy, it’s embarrassing to the game and ultimately it’s embarrassing to them.
“So we weed those folks out pretty quickly and concentrate on the ones that have shown up here with a respect for what it takes to get to this level.”
The daylong tryout was intended to cut the 800, who each paid $130 for the chance, by almost 90%.
A second series of matches today will reduce the number even more.
Perhaps to only one.
What would it mean for D’Elia to be that one?
“It would be a dream come true,” he said. “I have loved soccer since I was 6. It is everything to me.”
Miguel Sanchez, 31, owns a sporting goods store in Cadiz, Spain. He used the money he had been saving for a vacation to fly to Los Angeles. He will fly back Monday if he doesn’t make the cut.
Blessed Gwebu is a 25-year-old from Zimbabwe who is about to earn his nursing degree from Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley. He drove down for the tryout.
“When this came up, I said, ‘Hey, chance of a lifetime. I might as well go give it a shot,’ ” Gwebu said. “I had fun with it. I had a lot of fun.
“You should be able to show something, even if you’ve got only five minutes.”
Defender Kane Ho, 23, flew over from London at the urging of a friend even though he thought it was “a bit far to come” for an hour’s tryout, not that more time is really necessary.
“Most scouts say that they can spot a player within 10 minutes of seeing him,” Ho said.
Frank Yallop, the Galaxy’s coach, agreed.
“You can almost see straight away if they have what it takes,” he said, “and then you watch a little closer. An hour is a long time in soccer.”
While television crews from the BBC and Sky Sports News stayed and filmed all day, along with other networks, the Galaxy did its best to screen out English tabloids who had wanted their writers to take part and pen first-person pieces.
That didn’t stop Laurie Hanna, a lively little forward from Belfast in Northern Ireland, who slipped through the net. Hanna’s story of his tryout with Beckham’s team will be appearing in the Daily Mirror.
“We keep an eye on the Galaxy website because of David’s arrival,” Hanna said of Beckham.
“I’m going to write about my week in L.A., hoping to get a spot on the team alongside David. It’s a color piece about the other people who were here, the facilities, what it was like, the standard.
“There’s obviously going to be massive media interest back home once David arrives in the summer. This will just be a prelude to it, letting people know what he can expect.”
At sunset, Yallop and his assistants gathered to sift through the day’s findings and then drew a line through a vast majority of the players.
Late on Saturday night, the Galaxy posted on its website the 132 players who had made the first cut.
One of them was Jorge Facundo D’Elia.
The dream lives on.
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