When famed sports radio reporter Beto Duran (listen to me on his podcast, Living the Dream) texted me yesterday evening that a crazy-ass brawl erupted between soccer fans that went from the stands and onto the field, I immediately guessed SanTana. And I was right! My guess was very edumacated, fam: not only is SanTana the most-Mexican big city in the United States, it’s also probably the most chilango—that is, filled with people from Mexico City. And for weeks, the Mexican soccer press in Mexico and the United States had done stories about an upcoming match in the city between former players of Club América and Pumas UNAM, which was a brawl waiting to happen—and it did.
First, the particulars of Sunday’s fight between América and Pumas fans…fuck, who needs particulars? ROLL THE TAPE!!!
Trifulca entre aficionados de #Pumas y #América en el Condado de Orange. pic.twitter.com/CcSw0h6OGB
— Enrique A. Gutiérrez (@EnriqueSports) June 26, 2017
Now, try this angle:
Okay, the details: It happened at Santa Ana Stadium’s Eddie West Field during halftime for a fundraising match that benefited a youth soccer organization. ESPN Deportes says the brawl started after América fans went over to the Pumas side of the field, “an act that unleashed extreme violence on the artificial turf of the place,” per the florid writing of the Spanish-language press. The match didn’t go on after the DESMADRE.
SanTana police detained five people, but the REAL fun, of course, is the audio of the fight. The English-language media slobbering over this story obviously don’t have any chilangos on staff, because they’re missing out on the best parts of it. Like the field announcer nonchalantly stating “Chavos, ¡cálmense, por favor! ¡Cálmense! (“Boys, calm down, please! Calm down!”) as if it was an episode of El Chavo del Ocho. Or the pocho in the stand exclaiming “¡Verga, pepper spray! ¡La verga! (“Fuck, pepper spray! Fuck!” but literally translating as “Cock, pepper spray! Cock!”). Or the other guy who screamed the whole thing valío verga (“it sucked”—but, more accurately, “it was worth dick”). Or the woman saying, in the most chilango sing-song accent ever, “¡Ellos de pen-de-jooooos! (“They’re acting like pendejos”—you gotta know chilangos to really get why that was so HILARIOUS). Or how the Pumas fans looked like exiles from an El Tri concert, like the guy below wearing the neon-green hat and a shirt that said “Azul y Oro La Vida Por Los Colores Pumas” (“Blue and Gold — My Life for the Puma Colors”). And, Mexican soccer fans being Mexican soccer fans, the liberal use by men and women alike of “puto“—”faggot.”
Fans there told the Weekly that rival fans took advantage of next-to-no security, which just shows that the Santa Ana police department is still too busy hijacking the city’s democracy to pay attention to what actually goes on in the town they’re supposed to protect. Because while casual sports fans might have heard that the rivalry between América and the Chivas of Guadalajara is the greatest in Mexican soccer and akin to Yankees-Red Sox, the real nasty blood is between América and Pumas. Take the hate of the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, and fuse it onto a metropolis—actually, the better example would be the hatred between fans of the Chicago White Sox and the Cubs, as the Pumas fans think América fans are a bunch of puñeteros (limpwrists) while América fans think Pumas followers are just nacos—ghetto-ass Mexicans. There should’ve been massive security—instead, you had a bunch of rent-a-cops and a couple of cops who gladly used their batons.
Chavos, please don’t fight. Besides, the TRUE people to hate are those fresa-ass Chivas fans. Milagro that ustedes didn’t band together to heckle the Chivas house off Flower, or that mysterious Monarcas van painted in neon orange that circles around SanTana…
