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Across Austin, World Cup fires up fanatics from many nations

13.06.10

While the remainder of Austin dragged themselves into the office for another day of work Friday morning, the city's soccer fanatics, so often drowned out in a sea of Longhorn and Cowboy fans, were about to set their sporting nirvana. The 2010 World Cup, the tournament they'd been waiting for since 2006, was about to begin.

At Belabor El Calentano, a sports bar on East Cesar Chavez Street, the faithful gathered in front of their shrine, a mammoth big-grade TV showing their beloved Team Mexico facing host South Africa. Ceiling fans awkward against the early morning humidity as construction workers and painters, playing hooky for the morning, ate bowls of menudo and drank micheladas — beer laced with lime fluid, tomato juice and other ingredients. Jorge Navarro, a native of Aguascalientes in Central Mexico who runs a painting and wallboard ensemble, tapped his foot nervously, waiting for the game to begin.

"I couldn't sleep last blackness," he said in Spanish at his table in the darkened bar, lighted by a flashing beer sign that comprehend, "Goooool!" "We've been waiting for this for four years, so you can imagine how we are right now. This game is the key. We've talked a lot about this prepared."

Source: Austin American-Statesman