In Memoriam: Mi primo azul

This is to remember a childhood friend. A father, a son, a cousin. In the dry season we would spend time outside in the driveway. We would play soccer beneath the mango tree. Sometimes with an old soccer ball. Most of the time with a rubber ball or one made out of rolls of duct tape. It didn't matter. It was two against one. My younger cousin and I versus him.

He was always loyal to his team: Emelec of Ecuador. The team of his father and his brother. He taught me to love that team and I made it my own.

In the months before I moved away, we lived in the same house. There, I made up soccer games with G.I. Joe action figures. I named the tournament "Copa AmercoEuropea" and included random teams like Guayana and Andorra, ever the optimist. He would play along with me and would set up the brackets on a notepad and come up with names for all the players. We used tiny wooden stepping stools about half a foot tall and a foot wide as goals. Our grandfather, near the twilight of his life and mainly absent from reality, would watch us play. I still remember when I called "45 minutes" and grandpa said: "Se termino el partido."

My cousin also wrote in the single elimination brackets in my 1994 Don Balon World Cup magazine. I was annoyed. He had picked Bulgaria and Brazil for the final, with the Brazilians as the champions. He was right about that.

I will miss you, my cousin, my friend. You taught me to love the game and in doing so created one of the passions in my life.

This is for Fernando Villalva Velasquez. Soccer fan for life and an Emeleccista all the way to heaven. May you be at peace now.

SoccerBud: Jamie Trecker

Jamie Trecker has angered me more than once with his highly oppininated and blatantly negative comments about US soccer, the federation, and the MLS. He has received much hate mail from soccer fans, probably myself included although I can't remember. Some info on Trecker first from the Chicago Reader: "In addition to writing for Fox Sports, Trecker also works as the soccer research department for ESPN International, which contracts him to compile a weekly report of scores, statistics, and analysis of matches worldwide. The document, which the network consults when putting together its soccer telecasts and highlights reels, can run as long as 200 pages."
Just recently Trecker has posted highly negative chronicles on the national team's games against England and Spain, and lukewarm previews on the recent matches (the game against Argentina is this Sunday on ESPNClassic), as well as comments on LA's form during their first match.
I must say I disagree with Trecker on a lot of fronts. He may come from a renowned soccer journalism background (his father Jerry Trecker was an editor and sportswriter at the Hartford Courant for almost 40 years; he was among the first writers at an American daily to cover soccer regularly) and covering the sport with 5 TVs plugged into five different satellite dishes and anough knowledge of Spanish, German, Italian, and French to follow the sport from multidimensional angles, but his treatment of national players is sometimes ridiculous. We want to see the sport and the league grow in this country and although some negatives must be divulged along the way as a result of progress, it is also important to keep focused on what we should do to elevate the game in this country. He reminds me most of my uncle Mauro Velasquez, also a renowned figure in soccer journalism in Ecuador and most of the Spanish-speaking world (he has featured in several times on Spain's "Don Balon" magazine). Velasquez was often opinionated and extremely negative of Ecuador soccer, even during its recent surge onto the world scene.
But back to Trecker... Please take a breather, bud. Give us a hint of how the game can be improved. Give us positives about the league and the game. A man with such wealth of information should not constrict himself to the dark side of the sport. Yes, the US team looked horrible against England and yes, the MLS is not what soccer purists want. But recognize this... the US played a great game yesterday that only lost pace in the second half due to the absence of Adu and the unfortunate lack of play from Wolff. The MLS is still a work in progress and classic soccer league organization complete with relegation, salary caps and scheduling is still a few years away when the dust of league genesis settles.
I don't agree when he says that "life has more disappointments than anything else." Our triumphs eclipse all other things. What do we remember Maradona for most of all? Two things... Mexico 1986, quarter finals, Argentina 2 - England 1: His "hand of God" goal and the most beautiful play in World Cup history for the second goal.
Don't cheat us with the negatives... give us good. Soccer has come too far in this country to throw it all away with a few simple words.