Sporting KC vs. Los Angeles FC. Hotter than the wather.
Yesterday in the United States two important games were played almost simultaneously. One of them in Las Vegas, the city of sin, between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The other in Kansas City, Missouri, the city of barbecue, which pitted the local team against Los Angeles Football Club.
As I appreciate my mental health I try to avoid watching matches in which Sergio Busquets plays. On the other hand, my mission here is to cover the LAFC. So instead of going to Las Vegas to drink champagne in the cleavage of a stripper and watch the 14-time European champion do the goat, I had to go to Kansas City as a reporter. So that later they say that I do not sacrifice myself for my work.
Kansas is called the Paris of the Plains because it has many boulevards. When a place is the “something” of “something” it is actually the “nothing” of “nothing”, as Lisa Simpson said. Another point that Kansas has in common with the French capital is that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris and the world’s largest badminton ball is in Kansas City. Both are perfectly useless items. “My favorite restaurant in Paris is the one at the top of the Eiffel Tower,” Sartre once said, “because it’s the only one in all of Paris from which you can’t see the Eiffel Tower.” There is probably a barbecue restaurant on top of the world’s largest badminton ball in Kansas City, as it is the city with the highest number of barbecues per capita in the entire United States.
Sporting Kansas is coached by Peter Vermes, who holds the record of being the first athlete to win an MLS league as a player and another as a coach for the same team. It could be said, with the deepest respect, that Peter Vermes is to Zinedine Zidane what the world’s largest badminton ball is to the Eiffel Tower.
As I appreciate my mental health I try to avoid watching matches in which Sergio Busquets plays. So instead of going to Las Vegas to drink champagne in the cleavage of a stripper and see the 14-time European champion do the goat, I had to go as a reporter to Kansas City
I don’t know anyone of the starting eleven for Sporting Kansas, so with your permission, I’m going to call them all Dorothy after the protagonist of the Wizard of Oz, who was also from Kansas. It is said that L. Frank Baum, author of this magnificent children’s classic, was inspired by the tales he told his children about a land where a powerful wizard lived. “And what was that land called?” one of them once asked him. As he tried to improvise a name, Baum’s gaze fell on the cabinet where he filed his documents in alphabetical order and read the label on the bottom drawer: “OZ.” If L. Frank Baum had been a director of Barça, his book would have been titled “The Wizard of Non-Payment Lawsuits: Payroll.”
Thus, Sporting Kansas took the field with eleven dedicated Dorothys. I wonder if, being from Kansas, you could call Sporting KC a “Kansino team.” In this case, yesterday there was a beautiful parallelism here in the USA, because while some Kansinos from Kansas played against LAFC, other tired ones from Barcelona played against Real Madrid; teams both linked to Gareth Bale. So that later they say that football cannot be precise like a scientific formula. Which reminds me of when the famous Polish mathematician Stefan Banach first heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and exclaimed: “how beautiful it is! It looks like an equation!”
The game shown by the LAFC team was just as precise as a theorem yesterday (note how well I thread concepts in my articles). The Los Angeles team jumped onto the field with Chiellini on defense. Here in these pages we adore Chiellini, like this, without hot cloths. Not only because of that Jordi Alba hesitated during the Spain-Italy of the 2021 European Championship (although mainly because of that) but also because, from being in the mecca of cinema so much, he is getting the face of Vittorio De Sica’s character. Chiellini is a neorealist defender. A bicycle thief who steals balls and who makes fun of the jordis albas of this world. Any madridista who doesn’t sympathize with Chiellini should have him looked at.
I wonder if, being from Kansas, you could call Sporting KC a “Kansino team.” In this case, yesterday there was a beautiful parallelism here in the USA, because while some Kansinos from Kansas played against LAFC, other cansinos from Barcelona played against Real Madrid
Up front, LAFC came out again with Opoku, Vela and Chicho/Arango. LAFC fans, the “3252”, call Vela “El Rey”, as they used to call Clark Gable, and that’s big words. The truth is that the Mexican striker has an air of an old star when moving through the field. Languid and casual, doing nice things without trying too hard. Like those actors from golden Hollywood (Gable, Errol Flynn, John Barrymore…) for whom acting was just one more of his many expensive hobbies. The day Carlos Vela decides to start playing this sport seriously, an Actor’s Studio style football instead of an MGM style, he’s going to be a great player. Every time I see it, I like it a little more.
The first 45 minutes of the match were somewhat slow. Weather thing. Yesterday it was blazing hot in Kansas, with record high temperatures and that sort of thing. But what am I going to tell you?
Still in the first half, Opuku came close to opening the scoring for the visiting team. Opuku is a curious player. Sometimes he reminds me a bit of the first Vinicius, because he is very fond of grabbing the ball, running and not stopping until he hits the seats behind the goal. Opuku races are like riding a merry-go-round: you don’t get anywhere but have fun along the way. Just like Vela, I’m growing fond of her.
I’m also getting the point from Arango aka. Chicho, who yesterday scored the first goal of the game: a goal for the top corner after an assist from Opoku. A nice time the goal, believe me.
Chiellini is a neorealist defender. A bicycle thief who steals balls and who makes fun of the jordis albas of this world. Any madridista who doesn’t sympathize with Chiellini should make him look at it
Gareth Bale came out in the 64th minute and as soon as he stepped onto the pitch he started running like a gazelle. The more the minutes passed, the more he ran and the cooler he seemed to be. The Kansinos looked at him in amazement: “It’s about 1000 degrees, does this guy never get tired?” No, children, no. Gareth Frank is of another pasta, to see if you begin to assimilate it. When here in Valdebebas Pintus put him to run with the torture mask that he usually takes out in preseason, Gareth Bale pulverized the marks of his teammates. I know it on good ink.
The Welshman, on the Sporting KS field, moved like a pinball ball. Zas-zas, clin-clinc; from one side to the other, leaving in its wake a silver trail and many little lights. There are few more beautiful things to see in football than Gareth Bale playing when he is happy.
Bale sealed his happiness with a goal from the aesthete just a few minutes after coming off the bench. The temperature rose even more degrees in the field of Sporting KS. Many kilometers away, in Las Vegas, a certain Raphinha scored a goal against a Real Madrid team that is halfway on vacation. In Kansas City, the Paris of the Plains, cracked a goal from Gareth Bale.
There is magic in that expression, “Gareth Bale’s goal”, they will not deny me. Much more than in “Raphinha’s goal”, which sounds like something petty and unattractive. “Gareth Bale goal” instead fills the mouth and widens the lung. You know there is greatness behind those four words, and when you speak them, you feel like a dragon spitting a ball of fire.
I would not like to delve into hackneyed topics, but I admit that Bale’s yesterday was a golfer’s goal. Analytical, cold and calculated. As beautiful as an equation.
Immediately after scoring, Gareth Bale ran to the sidelines to hug Chiellini, who was no longer on the pitch. That shows without a doubt that Real Madrid blood still runs through his veins: you score your first goal in MLS and the first thing you do is go celebrate with the guy who wavered Jordi Alba in front of all of Europe. Great Gareth. Very big.
In short, victory for LAFC with a goal by Bale and the team that remains first in the standings. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t go to Vegas.
We return the connection.
Getty Images.
Previous installments of LA Is My Lady:
I. Preview of Nashville SC v. Los Angeles FC: The Classic of the Arts
II. A debut, a coyote and a real lawyer: Chronicle of Nashville SC vs. Los Angeles F.C.
