Spring In The Ukraine, and A New Season of Soccer Tales

Quick. Shakhtar Donetsk. What country is the team from? More to the point, which part of the name is the name of the city? How many of you know?

I thought so.

The other night, I watched the Roma--Shakhtar Donetsk Champions League match on DVR from a couple weeks ago. It was not a pretty sight for someone who grew up fascinated by the glamour of Italian soccer names: Serie A, Roberto Baggio, Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Paolo Maldini. Names are a big thing in soccer. In all sports, really. Sports are about mythology. The Italian mythology was dragged through the mud once more in the game against the Ukrainian champions from Donetsk.

Daniele De Rossi of Roma, who elbowed Brian McBride in the face in the 2006 World Cup, got away with another such elbow against Darijo Srna. De Rossi is now my candidate for dirtiest player in Italian soccer. Then again, Gennaro Gattuso head-butted an assistant coach for Tottenham. So it's a tight race, which is appropriate wording, since Italian fans give us some of the worst problems with racism in the game.

It's a sad thing when one's sports illusions are tarnished. Baseball has felt the brush of steroids mar the legacy of the last two decades. Soccer is not immune to that humanizing touch of corruption.

When I was younger, I would invent soccer tournaments. I would go through World Soccer magazines and pick random teams from leagues around the world, sometimes by blindly opening the magazine and pointing my finger at an article or a list of standings for a country, sometimes with the roll of a die. I had rules, such as no more than three teams from one particular country. I had these teams organized into groups, with different rounds, set up just like the World Cup or the Champions League.

Matches were settled by a roll of a die for each team to determine how many goals were scored. For national teams, I went so far as to assign goals to players, by picking players from the box scores of international matches. Points were earned or lost with wins, losses, draws. There were consequences for poor performances: if a team went through a tournament and earned zero points, falling at the group stage, they were not allowed to be selected for a tournament for two or three iterations.

I took my soccer rather seriously, yes. Also, I lived in a small town.

My point is that I loved the big names of soccer, that seemed mysterious, evocative of powerful story lines, and Italian teams and players were among my favorites. With my quarter-Italian heritage, I've always followed this hierarchy for determining which teams to root for: 1) USA; 2) England; 3) Italy.

A few years after the height of my die-rolling soccer tournament heyday, I read The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, which was an entertaining book, despite the smarmy self-righteousness of the American author. However, the indications of a lack of integrity in Italian soccer were disturbing, with reports of teams paying other teams for points to ensure safety from relegation or to ensure promotion. Then I read the absolutely outstanding A Season With Verona, which was engaging, but which pointed out some racist incidents with Italian fans, underscoring the rumors and reports I had heard elsewhere. These reports have only increased over the last years.

Then there was the match-fixing scandal of a couple years ago, which saw the might Juventus, the famous "Old Lady" of Italian soccer, relegated to Serie B as a punishment for malfeasance.

Sports are a business. I'm not sure whether I should be grateful or angry at Italian soccer for exposing the corrupt motivations to such a blatant degree.

But enough of the darkness.

Roma are guilty of hubris. When they were paired with Shakhtar Donetsk for this second round tie--a tie is a set of two games, one home game for each team--a Roma executive said that he was not going to lie; Roma were pleased with this draw.

Objectively, one appreciates the honesty, and one wouldn't have been surprised. There were other potential opponents with stronger pedigrees than that of the team from the Ukraine. But still, this is why we have cliches. The Roma team could have said that they had great respect for their opponents, that it would be a tough match. We might not have believed them, but the veneer of humility would have reduced the David versus Goliath factor for impartial fans.

As it was, I think it is great that Shakhtar Donetsk thrashed Roma quite thoroughly over the two legs, and is advancing to the quarterfinals. Underdog stories are the best part of sports, and it comes at a great time: the Ukraine is co-hosting the European Championships next year, and any publicity or momentum would surely be welcome.

I'll be interested to see how they do in the next round.

Speaking of names, the new season of Major League Soccer kicked off tonight, and I'm interested to see if David Beckham can win a title in what is likely to be his last season playing with the LA Galaxy. I think it could be a good year for Major League Soccer, with new teams in Vancouver and Portland, adding weight to the west coast balance. The three teams I'm most interested in this year are the San Jose Earthquakes for obvious reasons--and I will try to get to a live game this year--the Seattle Sounders, and the Galaxy. So many potential storylines. Let's kick it off.

Mexican Football: Crossing The Desert, Or; You Say Futbol, I Say Football. Let's Call The Whole Thing Offsides.

In the Chronicle, the sports on TV section doesn't even list the Mexican football games, even though there seem to be at least three or four games every weekend. That seems odd, given the Latino influence in San Francisco, but I guess it is at least artistically appropriate, given the difficulties I've had in finding traction as a wannabe fan of Mexican football, which will lend an air of profundity to this blog.

It just makes sense that I should follow Mexican football, aka soccer. I love soccer. Major League Soccer can be okay, but the quality of play in the Mexican games I've seen has always felt a step above in terms of fluidity and overall skill of the games. Plus, Mexico is a heck of a lot closer than Europe, and I've now been to the country.

Still, the challenges are several. For one thing, I have only a rudimentary understanding of Spanish. I can get the gist of some of what the soccer announcers are saying, helped by the fact that I understand the context, knowing soccer as a game. And in my week in Mexico, I managed to follow some of Marina's conversations with Mexicans. But still, the announcers talk so damn fast.

Also, I'm not familiar with where the teams are, so I have no sense for the identity of the clubs, and no sense of connection, even with my recent trip--an Internet search indicates there were no major teams near where we traveled to Baja California Sur, which is not surprising, as remote as it was. So I don't have any club to feel any particular allegiance to, although Chivas de Guadelajara at least is connected with Major League Soccer, serving as a parent club for Chivas USA. But Chivas USA is in Los Angeles. Ick.

But there are some points of possible connections that I can pursue. With so many games being shown, I could watch the same teams over and over, which would give me the chance to cultivate an appreciation for how a certain team plays. And there are some Americans who play in Mexico; Jonathan Bornstein, for instance, recently moved from MLS to a Mexican team. Or there is a team from Monterrey, whose name reminds me of Monterey in Alto California (California for the gringos)--I love Monterey, so maybe I would like Monterrey. Or there are the comments of the staff at a restaurant we ate at in Loreto, who were watching a game and saying that Club America was a good team. Maybe I should take their advice, except that my stumbling efforts to talk to them about soccer were kind of embarrassing. "Chicharito Hernandez!" (thumbs up).

Some teams are sponsored by Corona, which tastes great with fish tacos, although based on my own experience, if there were a team sponsored by Pacifico, I might have to go with them. Pacifico is refreshing. (Back to the Internet: Pacifico and Corona are from the same large brewery.)

In any case, I have finally found a section of soccernet.com, and another website, goal.com, that seem to have more coverage of Mexican football, so I'll start trying to follow it more. Heck, with American football having just gone into a lockout, committing a potential corporate-sports suicide like baseball did in 1994, I need another source of football, it seems. Might as well be the beautiful version from Mexico.