Chicago’s Victory FC, a team made up of seven Mexican American soccer players from the Illinois leagues, became the United States champion of the Neymar Jr’s Five, a small-court tournament held in Miami, Florida, and this weekend it will be competing in the World Neymar Jr’s Five in Brazil.
The Chicago youth beat the PC Brothers of Los Angeles 5-to-0, a national champion of the same tournament in 2016, who in turn had eliminated Red Star, another Chicago team in the quarterfinals.
The tournament took place in small courts fit for five players, with special rules since the teams play brief matches of 10 minutes, they lose a player each time the other makes a goal, and an expelled player counts as a goal for the opposing team. In the final match, Victory FC scored three goals via Jose Ochoa, another one by Daniel López and scored another goal thanks to the expulsion of a California player.
“We are all friends and we get along very well, there’s a lot of chemistry between us and that can take us very far in the tournament in Brazil,” said team captain Jose Ochoa. “This is an experience that very few young people have and it’s a lot of responsibility to go to another country and represent the United States, there in Brazil we want to win everything.”
The Neymar World Cup special tournament will be played in Praia Grande, in the Santos area (Sao Paulo state), very close to where Pele grew up and played. Neymar himself will deliver the trophy to the champion, who will be among the 53 participating teams from around the world.
A long way
The teams that battled in the U.S. national tournament in Miami were classified after winning the title of their city or region. Red Star was the champion in a tournament held at Chicago Indoor Sports, on Pershing Street, a few days ago. Interestingly, Chicago’s Victory FC did not make it to the national final after winning that match in Chicago. On the other hand, the Victory FC boys did a type of “market study” ahead of time and competed in another stadium.
“Here in Chicago there were 92 registered teams, in Ohio only 12 were registered and we thought it would be easier because there were nine or 10 teams out of 12,” Ochoa explained. However, upon arriving in Columbus, the team encountered an unpleasant surprise: one of those teams was the Columbus Futsal, a professional club that won several Midwest tournaments in the last two years.
“It was not so easy, we played the first game against them and we won 5-0,” added Ochoa, who said that Victory FC also managed to advance to the final, where it played Columbus Futsal again. “Yes, they were good, but each team has its strategy, and for the final we knew how they played and we won 1-to-0,” said the leader of the Chicago team.
Then in the Miami national championship, Victory FC finished first and undefeated in Group C after winning all three matches. After passing the quarter-final round, the Chicago boys thrashed Team Yolo, a team that came as a champion from San Jose, California.
Victory FC was made up of several top players from Chicago’s local leagues. The most experienced of them is Antonio ‘Tony’ Aguilar, dubbed by some the ‘Messi of Chicago’ by his playing style and even his resemblance to the Argentine player of Barcelona. Aguilar took a major step at DePaul University in his years of college soccer and then went on to win innumerable indoor and indoor tournaments in almost every Chicago league, especially with Atletico Nacional in CLASA (Chicago Latin American Soccer Association).
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For Aguilar this will be more of an overseas trip within his extensive soccer career, since two years ago he played for an indoor team from Chicago in an international tournament played in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Others like Jaime Alonso also played abroad in the past. At age 14, he participated in tests with teams from Mexico and trained with the base of the Chivas of Guadalajara. At age 17, he also traveled to Toronto, Canada, to play for Inter FC club of Chicago.
What’s interesting about the Victory FC group is that all of its players – with the exception of Aguilar, who is older – have known each other since they were kids, playing together or having played each other in local tournaments. One example are the twin brothers Sergio and José Fuentes, who grew up sharing local youth teams like Pumas 48, among others, and currently play for two teams CLASA Morelia and Deportivo Guerrero.
“We were also rivals in school because I play at UIC and he (Sergio) is at Roosevelt University,” said Jose Fuentes, 21, known by many as ‘James Rodriguez’ for his face similar to the Colombian from Real Madrid.
General Optimism
Traveling to compete in another country against foreign teams is a big unknown but the boys of Victory FC feel confident about the tournament in Brazil.
According to Alonso, the tournament will have players known as ‘Freestylers’ who practice unique soccer moves and street exhibitionism.
“It’s a street style, like Ronaldinho, they trick and hide much of the ball. We also have players who can do that magic, but we try to play a simpler soccer,” said Alonso. “I think it’s difficult to know how the tournament is going to be, but we’ll be prepared and I think we can win.”
For his part, Fuentes cannot wait to meet Neymar. “He will deliver the trophy to the champion and we will meet him because we are going to win,” said the young man from South Chicago with total confidence.
Victory FC Chicago
Player – Age – Team Origin (in Chicago)
José Ochoa – 21 – Chicago Real Celaya (CLASA)
Sergio Fuentes – 21 – Chicago Morelia (CLASA)
José Fuentes – 21 – Chicago Dep. Guerrero (CLASA)
Daniel López – 19 – Chicago Dep. Guerrero (CLASA)
Jaime Alonso – 20 – Chicago Tangancicuaro (CLASA)
Antonio Aguilar – 26 – Hammond, IN Atl. National (CLASA), Adria (NSL)
Alejandro Alvarez – 21 – Chicago Real Celaya (CLASA)
Neymar Jr’s Five World Final
Dates: 7th and 8th of July
Location: Praia Grande, Brazil
Tournament: 53 teams from 53 countries