Galaxy’s Rabid Fan Club Members Are in a World All Their Own
It is one hour before kickoff, and in parking lot H at the Rose Bowl, an inflatable Godzilla doll 4 feet high and wearing a yellow L.A. Galaxy soccer T-shirt has been propped up menacingly on the grass.
When a soccer team can pull in 90,000 fans, as the L.A. Galaxy did Sunday, when it can run undefeated in its first season, it deserves a tough mascot--one like this dressed-up Godzilla, which is these fans’ representation of the chupacabras, the terrifying mythic goat-sucking vampire that has become a superstition in Mexico.
Now this, in the eyes of the Galaxians fan club, is what soccer passion should look like--not “silly,” like the team’s official mascot, which these fans deride as too closely resembling a flaming carrot.
Even in soccer, with its reputation for ardent and occasionally violent shows of spirit, the two dozen Galaxians, the soccer team’s official, hard-core, multiethnic fan club, are standouts. They are believers in promoting not only a team, but a sport.
“What we’re trying to do, as much as anything else, is to let people know there’s professional soccer here,” said club member Bob Georgi, who drove in from Bakersfield for Sunday’s game of the flaming carrots versus the Tampa Bay Mutiny, which the Galaxy won 3-2. In an earlier unrelated tournament game, the U.S. national soccer team tied Mexico, 2-2.
Pasadena police reported only seven arrests--three for selling counterfeit tickets, three for public intoxication and one for theft--by the end of the afternoon. Vendors were not permitted to sell beer until after the first game, the U.S.-Mexico match.
“The crowd has been incredibly intense from the first moment,” said police Cmdr. Mary. L. Schander. But “we can have really big crowds that are well-behaved.”
For four hours before the 12:30 p.m. kickoff, endless rivers of fans had flowed through the gates nonstop, draped in American or Mexican flags, clad in cleats or high heels, soccer shorts or cutoffs, sombreros or tinted shades. Scores more were decked out in Galaxian yellow.
Sunday marked the largest attendance yet for a Galaxy game, and one of the largest this year for the Rose Bowl, a number that headlines Major League Soccer’s success story this season.
“It’s just been waiting to happen,” Georgi said. “What you’re seeing here is a reflection of the cosmopolitan growth of Los Angeles.”
The thousands in the Rose Bowl were already fired up about their teams, and had little need of self-appointed cheerleaders--to the disappointment of the fledgling fan club. Even with their bass drum and cowbells, the two dozen boisterous die-hards were nearly drowned out by the roar of the rest of the packed stadium.
But its ranks even among virtual fans are growing, club leaders said--in no small part because of the Internet. The club keeps in touch with many of its members via e-mail, and one Galaxian in a reserved box seat uses his laptop to transmit a real-time play-by-play of the matches to fans “listening” across cyberspace.
As part of an agreement with the team’s management, the Galaxians are the only sports fan club permitted to bring drums and signs into the Rose Bowl’s stands. They have met several players in person, and on occasion have finagled their way into the stadium en masse before the gates open to settle into “their” section, located behind the southern goal in general admission seating--somewhat like the fabled former Cleveland Browns’ “Dawg Pound” fans gathering in that stadium’s end zone.
The devoted fans took a few minutes before game time Sunday to sign an oversized birthday card for dreadlocked midfielder Cobi Jones, even though they’re not sure which birthday he was celebrating. First they spelled Cobi with a Y, but then inked it over to make an I.
For them, their zeal makes up for uncertainties of orthography.
“Soccer’s not a game you can buy with advertising,” says Galaxians club president Ozzy Gomez, 40, an immigrant from Argentina. “People will go because they feel it in their heart.”
Yet in the stresses of game day, even allies can find themselves bickering.
The Galaxians had planned to join the cheering section of Sam’s Army, as in Uncle Sam, a national fan club for the U.S. team, which played the first of Sunday’s two matches.
But even though the usually hyper-organized Galaxians had forgone some pregame festivities to ensure that they made it inside on time, they still didn’t end up sitting with the red T-shirted Sam’s Army fans.
Miscommunication, they say; it’s easier to reach people via the Internet than across a crowded stadium.
And it was a day of torn loyalties for everyone, anyway.
When it came to the other game on the day’s ticket, the Galaxians--all Southern Californians but many Latino--split over whether to root for the U.S. or to join the largely immigrant home crowd and cheer for Mexico.
But another fan’s loyalties were divided not between two teams, but between the two fan clubs.
Michael Breton, 37, who is both a devotee of Sam’s Army and a founder of the Galaxians, didn’t go inside the stadium until the last possible minute. Instead, he stood outside under a tent, handing out Sam’s Army literature and greeting fans. Still, the license plate on his tan truck reads: GO GALXY.
Breton said, “I want to show that people that love soccer can get along.”
“They’re normally here with me,” he said of his fellow Galaxians. “But I’m a Sam’s Army member first.”
* Still Perfect: Los Angeles Galaxy remains unbeaten after sinking the Tampa Bay Mutiny. C1
