Soccer took a holiday in Chicago on Saturday, leaving visiting fans to explore the city and Chicagoans to enjoy the weather, bemoan the decline of the White Sox-pretty much anything that didn’t involve international brotherhood through unfamiliar sport.
But still, if you looked hard enough while awaiting Tuesday’s second game at Soldier Field, you could find pockets of the passion that foreigners bring to the game.
Perhaps the most feverish spot Saturday had nothing to do with the United States team, which scored a moral victory by tying Switzerland in its first game, played at Pontiac, Mich.
It was on the Northwest Side, where Irish hordes squeezed into the Abbey Pub to watch the TV screens beaming in the Ireland-Italy game from New Jersey.
Among transplanted Irish, a World Cup game is enough. But this was more than just a World Cup game. In the last Cup, in 1990, Italy eliminated Ireland in the quarterfinals, and as many people as had been to the pub on St. Patrick’s Day showed up hoping to witness revenge.
“Organized chaos” was how Irish Consul General Frank Sheridan described the scene. “Beer-abetted group perspiration” would be another term.
A sure sign that this wasn’t your average sports bar: The TV broadcasters spoke Gaelic.
Another one: Ireland’s, and the game’s, lone goal-a beautiful lob shot tallied early-provoked mad cheering each time it was replayed, chants of “alay, alay” and, for the rest of the game, tension on a level of that experienced by Bulls fans during playoff games with the New York Knicks.
“A one-nil lead at halftime has us all on tenterhooks,” Sheridan said. “I can guarantee that 5 million Irish around the world are neither dispassionate nor at ease in any way.”
As the Italian pressure mounted in the second half, the shouting grew more intense:
“C’mon, tighten up! Tighten up! Get back! Get back!”
Then, when the half continued on beyond the alloted 45 minutes (a common practice to make up for time lost to injuries): “Blow the damn whistle. It’s been nearly four minutes!”
At last, the whistle blew and so, almost, did the roof. “You’ll never beat the Irish,” was one of the printable chants.
“It means life,” said Mick Kearns, 20, who came to Chicago from Dublin three months ago for work as an apprentice electrician. “Ireland’s such a small country and we beat the best in the world. . . . It’s the heart. It’s the Irish heart that wins it for them.”
Why leave home? “I thought there’d be a lot more Italians here. I thought it’d be wild and there’d be chanting and singing,” lamented Steve Zan, who schlepped his soccer-illiterate buddies from the Loop to pack into a raucous bar with other boisterous Italian fans in Little Italy, on Chicago’s Near West Side.
Instead, the 32-year-old holder of dual citizenship had to beg the waitstaff at Hawkeye’s Bar and Grill on West Taylor Street to get the third round of the U.S. Open golf tournament off the big screen and Italy-Ireland on it. Even with golf banished, they found themselves surrounded by just a handful of other transplants in an atmosphere practically American in its indifference.
One of his friends, at least, probably didn’t know the difference. “I know so little about soccer I thought we were going to a live game,” said Henry Lydick, 33, a law student.
At the neighboring table, Scott Salvatore brought friends along to take in some real Italian soccer hysteria. His reaction: “It’s embarrassing.”
Snippets: Down the street, barber Aristide “Augie” Bifero caught bits of action on the Spanish-speaking channel in his South Racine Avenue shop. Between shaves and haircuts, the 59-year-old Italian native would run two doors down, to the bar SS Buddies, to watch in English.
“I’m kind of mad I have to cut hair,” Bifero said.
Sitting in SS Buddies, his friend Vito Amarino was also kind of mad-but not for soccer.
“This is stupid, all that running up and down,” said the 69-year-old as he watched the game. “I’d be watching the Cubs, but Augie doesn’t have cable and he wants to watch it.”
It’s up to her: Another Italian-American, the always breathless Liza Minnelli, was the chief attraction at the $500-a-head World Cup Chairman’s Opening Night Gala held Friday night on Navy Pier.
Minnelli on soccer:
– “This is the best sport in the world. . . . Thank you for inviting me.”
– “These guys are in shape. We’re talking shape.”
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– “It’s been such a male day. The testosterone’s just flying.”
– “I know what an opening night is like so-Happy Opening Night, everybody!”
Ain’t no goal wide enough: At Soldier Field on Friday, with less than two hours until showtime, opening ceremonies technical director Gary Heitz looked at a still unassembled soccer goal and said, “This is my last headache.”
As part of the Cup opening’s opening, the goal had to be rigged to collapse as soon as singer Diana Ross kicked a soccer ball into it.
“She did great” in dress rehearsal, kicking the ball solidly into the net, said senior producer Bob Doepel.
“She should have. She was 2 feet away from it,” Heitz observed.
But when it came to showtime, Ross pranced regally downfield (forgetting to lip-sync on the way), approached the ball, struck it-and missed to the left. The net collapsed anyway, and Ross was free to begin her medley.
Music, music, music: What goes together better than soccer and rock ‘n’ roll? In truth, probably most things. But that hasn’t stopped bands, teams and record-company weasels from attempting to link the two this week.
First it was the Scorpions, a German heavy metal band that apparently is to the German team what certain young women of slack parentage are to heavy metal bands.
The fortysomething Scorpions, whose five members take the stage wearing an estimated 2.6 cows, spent much of their week palling around with the defending champion Germans.
The Scorpions had a concert scheduled Thursday night at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, but they also played at a team barbecue Monday at Oak Brook Hills Hotel and Resort. Some of the German players jumped on stage to sing along on “No Pain No Gain,” whose ubermensch lyrics apparently have made it an unofficial theme song (“Keep goin’ don’t ever stop/There’s time to rest the day you’ll drop.”)
The Germans, of course, were inspired to keep goin’ to a 1-0 victory over underdog Bolivia in Friday’s opening game.
Cabdriver interview of the day: “Not really.” “No, not really.” “Not really.”
That was Indian cabbie Mahmoud Qasin, 23, responding to the questions:
1. Are you interested in soccer?
2. Is the World Cup big among your Indian friends?
3. Has business picked up because of the World Cup?