THE TANK : Eduardo Hurtado, the Galaxy’s Not-So-Secret Weapon, Has Emerged as Major League Soccer’s Best Player
A hug, a blown kiss and then a piggy-back ride: Eduardo Hurtado is on the job.
His 6-foot-3 frame is covered with another night’s work and another opposing defense has been thoroughly beaten.
“El Tanque” has led the Galaxy to another victory, and now has someone in his turrets.
“We just wait and see,” said Hurtado’s wife, Celina, seated in the front row of the Rose Bowl, two young children beside her. “Every time he scores we know he is going to do something. He either blows me a kiss or gives hugs or something.”
On this day, Hurtado has blown a kiss, given a hug, and with his third goal still uncelebrated, he walks slowly to the stands, climbs a few steps, takes his 3-year-old son, Steward, in his arms, and carries him onto the field as the crowd erupts. “El Tanque” carrying “El Tanquito.” Big and little tank blow kisses back toward mom.
Eduardo Hurtado, Major League Soccer’s 200-pound leading goal-scorer . . . blowing kisses.
Yes, a tank that shoots kisses.
*
How do you stop The Tank?
That was the question posed to Hurtado at a recent practice.
He stood silently for a long time, smiled, shrugged. It was answer enough.
Someone asked another stumper. What MLS defender has been most effective against him?
Hurtado stood silently even longer. He shrugged again. An answer was offered: “How about John Doyle . . . from San Jose?”
Hurtado paused again, and said finally: “Doyle, si, Doyle.” The 27-year-old smiled big like a schoolboy who had been whispered the answer.
Doyle merely limited Hurtado to one goal in two games. And that was before Hurtado started rolling.
In the Galaxy’s first three games, Hurtado managed only one assist. In the last three, he has seven goals and an assist, including three goals Wednesday in a 3-1 victory over the Colorado Rapids, whom the Galaxy plays again Sunday at Denver.
In the early part of the season, some wondered if “El Tanque” was a dud. But after Wednesday’s game, Hurtado trails only Kansas City forward Preki in total points, 27-26, but has 11 goals to Preki’s 10. Also, Preki has played in 16 games while Hurtado has played in 11, and Preki has 32 shots on goal to Hurtado’s 25.
“He is the best player in this league,” Galaxy Coach Lothar Osiander said.
He wasn’t even close early in the season. The team had heard so much about Hurtado, who began his professional career in 1988 with Ecuador’s Centro Juvenil Deportivo, at 19. He was a member of Ecuador’s national team. He scored four goals in a Korea Cup game in 1995.
“I remember the first time I met him at training camp in San Diego,” Galaxy midfielder Jorge Salcedo said. “I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, you know this isn’t a basketball camp. You’re going to have to leave.’
“He was huge, and you could see that he knew how to use his body. You knew he was going to be tough to handle.”
But there were several things that Hurtado had to handle before he lived up to expectations.
“Everywhere I have gone I have started slow,” Hurtado said through an interpreter. “In Switzerland [with Saint Gallen], Mexico [with Correcaminos], and in Chile [with Colo Colo]. And in each it was just a natural process of settling. I need to be in a place where my family feels good and where I feel good. Only then can I play my best.”
His comfort begins with Galaxy assistant Octavio Zambrano, also from Ecuador, who gave up playing in his country to attend Chapman College. Zambrano knows soccer in Ecuador, he knows Esmeraldes, the town where Hurtado grew up, and he knows what it’s like to come to this country, your bag stuffed with worries.
“When Eduardo heard that there was a fellow Ecuadorean national on the team, it made it much easier for him to come here,” said Celina, who has been married to Eduardo for four years. “Octavio has done everything for us. He has helped us become comfortable here.”
He was also the one in Hurtado’s ear when he wasn’t playing well.
“I remember after one game I could see that he was down and I pulled him aside,” Zambrano said. “I told him: ‘Eduardo, you are the best forward in the league. You just have to let it happen.’ ”
Hurtado’s acclimation to the United States also included learning a new style of play. In South America, Hurtado’s size and footwork in close confines fit the style. In the United States, he was asked to be a bit of a speedster, to chase the long ball.
“He came to a league where the soccer is played at a faster pace,” Zambrano said. “Speed was an aspect of his game he hadn’t been able to exploit. He needed time to adjust.”
Hurtado is not Cobi Jones; he is not going to run anyone down. But he is deceptively quick, and when he gets moving, few want to stand in the way.
“I think he takes it a little easy on us in practice,” said Salcedo, who is assigned to mark Hurtado in workouts. “If he went all out, he would humiliate us like he has the rest of the league.”
Hurtado is, by his coach’s estimate, still growing as a player.
“He is like [Colombian national team player] Freddy Rincon, but only stronger, and he is still developing,” Zambrano said.
There is a chance Hurtado’s development will continue elsewhere. He is merely on loan to MLS from Colo Colo, but the league has an option to buy. And as Zambrano put it: “They will buy. Oh, they will buy.”
Or as Osiander said: “[Eduardo] is not for sale.”
Not after Wednesday’s game. His first goal was very Hurtado-like, as he pushed a Colorado defender to the ground to win a ball he had no business getting. After a blast from outside the box netted his fourth game-winning goal, best in the league, he finished the scoring by leaping in a crowd to head in a long cross from Mauricio Cienfuegos.
Two of the three goals would not have been scored by a smaller, less-physical player, but Hurtado was blowing kisses, hugging and then finally carrying Steward off in triumph.
“Any time he is not playing or practicing, he spends with the kids,” Celina said. “He is a gentle man, he just spends time with me and plays with the kids. That is all he does.”
His family sits in the same place every home game, a section over and about 20 seats below the rest of the players’ families. Celina claps madly the whole game, Steward stares wide-eyed at the field trying to spot the big tank, and Priscilla, only 1 1/2, is usually busy with her thumb.
“This is where he wants us,” Celina said. “So he can look up and see us, and then celebrate with us. Even when he scores at games on the road he will look up at the sky in our honor.”
He will be on the road Sunday and will also miss the Galaxy’s game against the New England Revolution on July 4 to train for an Ecuadorean World Cup qualifying match. He has scored three of Ecuador’s six goals during qualifying for World Cup ’98.
“I would like to be here for [the Galaxy], but it is important,” Hurtado said.
He will also be away from his family, a much more difficult separation.
“On the field, he is intimidating and I think in the last month he has developed a bit of a nasty streak,” Fraser said, “Off the field, he is very soft-spoken, very polite, very into his family.”
But is Hurtado too nice?
“Him being nice got me in trouble once,” Zambrano said. “After he scored his first goal [against D.C. United on May 5] my girlfriend saw him blow a kiss to his wife after he scored, and she just kept asking me why I had never done that for her when I played.
“A lot of the girls from the team said the same thing: ‘Why hasn’t anyone done that for us?’ He got us all into trouble. But it was good trouble.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
MLS Scoring Leaders *--*
Name Team G Goals Ass. Pts. 1. Preki Kansas City 16 10 7 27 2. Eduardo Hurtado Galaxy 11 11 4 26 3. Roy Lassiter Tampa Bay 12 9 2 20 4. Steve Rammel Washington 11 8 3 19 5. Brian McBride Columbus 11 8 2 18 Giovanni Savarese NY/NJ 12 9 0 18 7. Raul Diaz Arce Washington 13 8 0 16 8. Jason Kreis Dallas 15 6 3 15 Paul Bravo San Jose 13 6 3 15 Jean Harbor Colorado 12 6 3 15
*--*
