Soccer Fans Get a Kick Out of Visitors
As the referee’s whistle ended a hard-fought soccer match at Oxnard’s Del Sol Park, many in the crowd of 3,000 rushed the field--Mexican soccer fans in pursuit of their homeland heroes.
Grown men strong-armed each other to take photos of the players. They ripped off their T-shirts in hopes of getting them autographed.
They wanted to get close to players on the Mexican professional team Necaxa, one of three clubs undergoing preseason training in Oxnard.
“It’s something I feel deep inside,” said 21-year-old Jose Rubio, a fruit packer and amateur soccer player who attended last week’s match in the city’s La Colonia neighborhood. “Watching them is a passion.”
In a town where soccer is a favorite sport, and 348 amateur teams in four leagues form a kind of local political structure, visiting professional teams are like homeland royalty.
Although such teams have been coming to Oxnard for more than a decade, in recent years managers and promoters have targeted the city as a training haven for professional Mexican teams.
Veteran Los Angeles promoter Hugo Bandi has brought more than 20 teams to Oxnard in the last year and a half.
“Oxnard is getting on the map,” Bandi said. “We have the public and we have the space for it.”
This year, Oxnard hit the big time when it attracted the superstar Chivas team, 10-time champions from Guadalajara described by fans as “the Mexican Lakers.”
Thirty Oxnard players, ages 15 to 19, were selected to play against Chivas, and the coach of Mexico’s youth national team came to train them for six weeks.
For days leading up to the match, Ventura County’s Spanish-language radio stations whipped up excitement with the battle cry “Goooaaallllll!”
On street corners and in convenience stores, soccer enthusiasts were abuzz with news of the game.
“They like it, they play it, they talk about it,” said Oxnard’s Mexican consul Luz Elena Bueno Zirion, who attended a welcome dinner for the team.
Lift a stone and find a Chivas fan in Oxnard, said Carlos Charbenel, the team’s general director
“Chivas is not only for Mexico,” Charbenel said. “It’s for all the Mexicans here in the United States.”
Fans say one of the reasons they love Chivas is that the team only accepts Mexican players, unlike other clubs that use players from other countries.
Martin Aguirre took a month off from work as a waiter, his first vacation in four years, to do advance work for Chivas. “My boss understood,” he said. “He’s a fan too.”
Aguirre, a youth soccer coach, considers this his chance to observe the greats as he prepares his 14-year-old son to someday play against them, if the team returns to Oxnard.
Caltrans employee Martin Sanchez said his wife is so enamored of the team from her Guadalajara hometown that she checks to see when Chivas is playing before flying to Mexico for visits.
In the next two weeks, Chivas and another team, Tigres, will play against professional and local all-star teams.
But mostly the clubs are here for rigorous training to prepare for the Mexican tournament season, which stretches from July to December.
Luis Delgadillo, an Oxnard welder who once played professional soccer in Mexico, takes his 9-year-old son, Eric, to every big game he can, including the one last week in Del Sol Park.
Necaxa, a Mexico City team owned by Mexican television network Televisa, beat a team of Oxnard all-stars 4-0.
As he watched the game, Delgadillo, 39, recounted being unable to afford tickets to World Cup matches in Mexico in 1970 and 1986. He said he never got over it.
So when Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, he spent $600 to take his whole family to two games.
“Soccer is in my heart,” said Delgadillo, his son on his lap, both ignoring the expletives that spectators yelled over their heads at the losing local team.
Nearby, other fans balanced on bicycle seats to get a better view of the action.
A group of people wearing Lakers shirts was quick to declare allegiance to soccer, and Mexico.
Aristeo Ramirez, 76, sat in the bleachers amid discarded peanut shells and recalled Oxnard history in terms of soccer decades.
“In the ‘50s, there was no soccer; in the ‘60s, soccer grew up,” and big teams didn’t really start coming until the ‘90s, he said.
Joaquin Valadez, president of Oxnard’s Clubos Unidos soccer league, likes to think part of the reason pros come to La Colonia is the improved Del Sol field.
Valadez raised more than $16,000 to re-sod the field and personally labored until 3 a.m. some nights, using equipment borrowed from the strawberry farm where he works.
“It’s part of our tradition, part of our lives,” he said of soccer. “These players are role models for our kids.”
