Author: matt.kelemen

I woke up yesterday morning to see a river washing down our street in Recife. Brown water pouring down the street, washed in waves by tire-deep cars slowly fording the streets. Rain bucketing down while pedestrians in flip-flops cautiously made their way knee deep over deluged sidewalks. Normally, I might be concerned for my safety in such a situation. Will the power go out? Will our building flood? But yesterday, I only had one question: Would a drenched pitch be better for the Yanks or the Germans at the Arena Pernambuco? Six hours to game-time and my mind was on the match. THE match. Axis and Allies. David and Goliath.

We donned our red, white and blue and waded our way to the metro, which was altogether too quiet. So I took up the role of cheer leader, starting with my standby: “Ole, ole, ole, ole, USA, USA.” The American fans joined in and, to my delight, so did some of the Brazilians on the train. The Germans sat on their hands.

We switched trains, the crowd swelled, and I kept up my singing. “Oh when the Yanks. Go marching in. Oh when the Yanks go marching in. I want to be in those numbers. Oh when the Yanks go marching in.” More Americans joined. But still no response from the Germans. The mighty Germans, who just 10 days ago had draped the stadium in Salvador with banners and had thundered out their chants, drowning out the Portuguese. They were eerily quiet.

And on the way to the stadium, all of the ticket-seekers were Americans, desperate to get into the Arena and cheer on the US. We passed by them signing new songs we had learned: “We love you, we love you we love you, and where you go we’ll follow, we’ll follow, we’ll follow, because we are the US, the US, the US, and that’s the way we like it, we like it, we like it, o-o-o-o-ooooooooo, o-o-o-o-ooooooooo.” Still nothing from the Germans. No chanting. No cheers. Nothing.

And then I realized. There are more of us than them. More Americans sloshing through the apocalyptic rain for the privilege of watching Jurgen’s new boys than fans showing up to cheer on Die Mannshaft, a bona fine contender to lift the trophy.

So, when the seats were filled and we were among the die-hard supporters from the American Outlaws, I happily passed my song-leading to a fan dressed as Teddy Roosevelt facing his fellow fans and conducting them in the call-and-response cheer that has become our new anthem.

“I…

A simple word.

“I believe…

Feels like church.

“I believe that…”

A little bit louder now.

“I believe that we…”

Yes. We. The 11 guys on the pitch and the 20,000 people in the arena standing together.

“I believe that we will win.”

Everyone starts jumping up and down, singing that line over and over. And at that moment, it’s clear: WE OWN THIS ARENA!

I flash back to other moments I’ve had in big stadiums: flags waving around the Maracana during a Flamengo-Fluminense clasico. 90,000 fans for La Universidad de Chile jumping up and down and signing for the full 90 minutes. I remember wishing that it could be like that for American soccer fans. And now it was. No, we didn’t win the game. And yes, the Germans got their chance to be loud when Muller scored a dagger of a goal. And no, it wasn’t even that good a game. You could see it on the faces of Clint Dempsey and Jermaine Jones and Tim Howard that limping out of the Group of Death into the knockout round wasn’t good enough.

But for me, seeing our fans absolutely dominate a stadium a continent away, it was an unqualified win.

Yesterday, Mexico took on Croatia for a spot in the knockout rounds of the Cup. There were some good reasons to root for Mexico:

1. Croatia has the ugliest uniforms of all 32 teams. Not as bad as the old 1994 US jersey I sported, but close.

2. Mexico is in our region. More wins for the US, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico might mean more slots for our part of the world in the next World Cup.

3. We speak Spanish better than Croatian.

4. Mexico is in the Americas, and there’s a strong pull here in Brazil to support all “American” teams, especially against Europe (In case you’re wondering, Argentina gets lumped in with Europe.)

5. Our kids once had the chance to escort the Mexican players onto the field for a friendly, so they both had a personal connection.

6. The Arena was filled with Mexican fans, so it would be much more fun (and safer!) to belt out Cielito Lindo (“Ay yay yay yay, canta no llore!”) than to join in the Croatian chants.

7. There were no Croatian chants.

All that said, boy was it hard to root for Mexico. It’s like rooting for the New York Yankees or the Miami Heat. You can respect their talent, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them. After all, they are our arch rivals.

On the metro ride to the arena, we met fans from across the Mexican diaspora (and that includes Aztlan!). They were decked out in green, doffing gigantic sombreros, passing around bottles of tequila, whistling, and singing rousing songs. Much more fun than the staid Germans, the boring Portuguese, and the timid Spaniards we had seen in earlier games (I’m leaving out the Dutch, because they always know how to enjoy a game). The costumes were outrageous — a pack of 10 goalkeepers with 80’s-style Jorge Campos jerseys, a band in red jumpsuits in the style of superhero parody Chapulin Colorado (“He’s like superman,” someone tells me), Aztec headdresses, and, of course, Mexican wrestling masks.

In the stadium, where they vastly outnumbered the Croatians, the Mexicans were intensely partisan, booing the start of the Croatian national anthem, whistling mercilessly every touch of the ball by their opponents, and shouting insults in unison at the keeper on every goal kick (try explaining the word “p#to” to an eight-year old). Perhaps this was just my Yankee bias, but they seemed downright mean at times. I started to understand the intimidation that American players feel when they play in the Azteca. And for a while, when a nil-nil draw or even a lucky Croatia win looked to be in the cards, I started to wonder what a surly crowd might look like on the metro back to town.

Fortunately, the game came alive with three Mexico goals, each punctuated with a gigantic roar and a drenching shower of Brahma beer around the stadium. And indeed, despite having attended upwards of 20 World Cup games, feeling the cold sticky beer down my neck was something like a baptism. Viva Mexico, at least for today.

Guest blog from Adela Kelemen

I can see the island. I’m in the air, looking over the greenery and rock. We start to go down. Once we land, we get off using stairs, which I’m not used to. We get into the airport and paid our taxes and all that boring stuff. Then we got out of the airport and some people picked us up. They were named Lili and Neta. There wasn’t enough room in the taxi we were going in, so my dad rode in Lili’s buggy. Once we got to our pousada (which is Portuguese for guest house), we unpacked and we met Maria, one of the owners of the pousada.

After we got settled in, we went to go explore. My Dad and my brother Dylan went to watch the Mexico – Brazil game in TAMAR, the turtle research center. I didn’t want to want to watch the game, so me and my mom went back to our pousada and got changed into our bathing suits and went to the beach. We went down a muddy road to get to the beach and I was thinking that it was bad and mucky and I was feeling uncomfortable. But it turned out to be worth it. The beach was very beautiful with really clear water and very calm waves. It was just perfect. After about an hour or so, we went back to our pousada, got changed into clothes and went to go meet up with Daddy and Dylan at TAMAR to catch the end of the game. After the game, we went to dinner and had an amazing dessert with brownie and ice cream. We went back to our pousada and got a good night of rest.

The next day, we woke up to find breakfast waiting on the table for us. It had all sorts of foods. We gobbled up our breakfast fast and headed toward the harbor. We were going on a boat tour, which had snorkeling. We rented our snorkel gear and headed off toward the boat. The boat was called Trovao dos Mares, which means Thunder of the Seas. We got onto the boat and we toured around. At one point we even saw spinner dolphins swimming in front of our boat. After the touring, we went to a calm beach called Praia do Sancho and anchored the boat. We got our gear and got ready to get in the water. At first I thought there was going to be a ladder going down to the water, but then I heard my dad say, “Come on, jump in!” And he jumped 10 feet down into the water feet first. I was freaked out after he did that. I asked Dylan to go before me and then mommy to go before me. My dad said, “Come on, you have to do it if you want to snorkel.” So, I got ready, I took my snorkel out of my mouth, and I jumped in. I felt myself falling, I knew there was no turning back and that I was going to get wet. Ka-sploosh! I landed in the water. It wasn’t too bad, to be truthful, probably because I had a life vest on. So, my dad taught me to blow out the water from my snorkel and go under if I wanted. It was so fun. There were so many fish. I even saw this one fish that was completely, brilliantly blue. After all that fun snorkeling, we got back into the boat, where they served us an amazing lunch with sushi, grilled fish, and more. Oh, did I mention the watermelon?

Once we finished, we returned to port to do plana-sub, which is holding onto a small platform roped onto a boat and snorkeling behind it. But, it started to pour, so we got a rain check on the plana-sub and went back to our pousada. By then, the weather had cleared up, and I was really upset because I wanted to do the plana-sub really bad. But it turned out that we got to go to the same beach where I had gone with my mom (Praia do Boldro) and we had a lot of fun. After that, we went to a restaurant, ate dinner, and had another great dessert, not as good as the last one, but still pretty good.

We woke up in the morning the next day and had breakfast just like the one before. We gathered our snorkeling gear and took a taxi to the harbor. We waited a little, put sunscreen on, and finally got onto the boat for plana-sub. Plana-sub was incredible. I saw two sea turtles (one olive and one green). I also saw a lemon shark, a reef shark and a ray, as well as a bunch of cool fish. After we returned from plana-sub, we went with two new friends named Sarah and Julia from Berlin to eat acai, which is a purple berry mushed up into an icy sorbet with granola, banana and honey. It was SO DELICIOUS!

That afternoon, we went to Praia Sureste on the outer sea. We had a lot of fun and I saw a massive olive turtle, almost as big as my dad. We were following it for a while, but then some people came up and tried to touch it, which made the turtle swim off. At first, when I was underwater, it was hard to hear, so I thought that my dad was swearing at them, but when I got out of the water to hear him more clearly, I heard him say, “You’re not supposed to touch the turtles!” I was relieved. We swam back and I got some cuts on my knee from the coral, but otherwise it was really, really fun. We went back, ate dinner, and went to sleep. Oh, did I mention there were a few lizards in our pousada?

On the last full day on Noronha, I slept in because my dad said I could, and I woke up to a wonderful breakfast. We went out to Sancho Beach with our snorkel gear. To get to the beach, we went down this ladder between these narrow rocks. It was pretty cool, except for the fact that I’m claustrophobic. Once we got down, we did some snorkeling – no turtles, but some really cool fish and a cool ray. After that, we got out of the water and, while wandering, we noticed this stream coming out of this viney stream. So I suggested that we get our shoes on and follow it. We followed it up through an archway of branches and we came out into a clearing with a beautiful waterfall. There were millions of lizards, so my mom named it Lizard Falls. We went under the waterfall a little bit and it felt really nice, because it was fresh water rather than salt water. It also felt like a massage. After a little bit, we went back down the trail and onto the beach again.

We went back to our pousada and had some more acai. Then we went to Praia dos Porcos (which means the Beach of Pigs). We were swimming and it was really cool. We saw a ray and my dad and brother saw a turtle, but I didn’t. We snorkeled for a little bit and then went back to our pousada for our last night.

Finally, today, we went to one more beach (Praia do Conceciao), where I just swam in the water. It was really fun. My mom and I built a sandcastle that was knocked down by the waves. We played tag in the water and my dad saw two rays next to each other in the waves. It was a great way to finish our trip to Noronha.

I’ll never forget this place.