<i> Bombos</i> Away : Union Argentina Has Last Cheer, German Club the Last Beer in Orange County’s Echo of World Cup Soccer Championship
In an industrial warehouse deep in the heart of Irvine Sunday, the bass drums were beating loudly.
“Ar-gen-tina! Ar-gen-tina!,” screamed 250 Argentines and Argentine-Americans, as Jorge Ponte, 30, of Anaheim, pounded out the rhythm on the huge bombo , a tradition in South American soccer stadiums.
Argentina had just scored again, giving it a 2-0 lead over West Germany in the World Cup soccer final in Mexico City, and the crowd watching the game at the Union Argentina club--a rented warehouse on Cowan Avenue--was ecstatic. Men and women jumped up and down on chairs and hugged. Shrill whistles blew incessantly.
“Anything to make noise is good,” said the club’s president, Francisco Ponte, at half time.
A group of Argentine immigrants founded the club about three years ago, “so we could have a place for barbecues and parties” after soccer games, said Juan Carlos Vilte, 43, of Garden Grove. About 400 families belong to the club, which is host to dances, Spanish classes and televised soccer games.
Many of the fans at the club on Sunday wore blue-and-white headbands with “Argentina” printed on the front--a gift from Miniondas, a Santa Ana Spanish-language weekly newspaper. Ponte turned one of the headbands inside out to show it was stamped “Mexico.” Mexico had lost in the quarterfinals of the tournament, but the newspaper thoughtfully redesigned some of the bands for fans of the remaining Latin American team.
A few miles away, at Anaheim’s Phoenix Club, more than 60 soccer fans were transforming the upstairs viewing room into a German beer hall for the afternoon.
While the Germans had little to cheer about during the first half, the West German team’s first goal late in the second half sent the room into a frenzy.
“That’s the nature of the German people--never give up,” said Ana Schanz, one of the 15,000 county residents on the membership roles of the Phoenix Club, a society for German-speaking citizens.
A few minutes later, the room erupted once more as West Germany tied the game. “Esterwald,” a lively Prussian fight song, burst over loudspeakers, and the crowd sang along.
But the West Germans’ fortunes plummeted faster than the old Argentine peso moments later, as midfielder Jorge Burruchaga scored on a breakaway, giving the South American team a 3 to 2 lead with just a few minutes to play.
At Union Argentina, the crowd, which had been stunned into silence by the German comeback, rose in unison with the goal, and Ponte’s drum beat once more. Then it was over, and light poured into the warehouse as the doors were thrown open. The fans paraded out and once around the building, waving blue and white flags, banners, pennants.
“I’m sweating, I was so nervous,” said Huntington Beach resident Marta Sroka, 40, a native of Buenos Aires. “We won because we are better--we play with our hearts, the Germans play with their minds. The heart is better than the mind.”
David Cohen, 24, who drove to the club from Burbank with his parents, brother and two sisters, saw a different reason for the Argentine victory. “God is Argentinian,” said Cohen, whose father emigrated to the United States from Buenos Aires 25 years ago, and whose whole family on Sunday was dressed in blue-and-white striped pants or skirts.
Back at the Phoenix Club, local soccer coach Hans Holste provided a less emotional assessment of the game. “Argentina is a just winner, although I’m very proud of Germany for coming back like that,” said Holste, once a player in his native Bremen. “What very few people know is that Germany has been in the finals five times. No other team in the world has done that.”
Holste smiled. “Oh well,” he sighed, lifting a bottle of Beck’s. “Nothing left to do but drink a German beer.”
Details on the World Cup final in Sports.
