It’s April 1st, and after waiting hours in an online queue, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of soccer fans taking their “last chance” to get World Cup tickets at face value were booted back to the start of the line.
I was among those hoping to get tickets, as was my dad, Freddie. I woke at 8 am, just five hours after landing in Chicago, and delayed a brunch with my 90-year-old grandma and cousins to guarantee a dream to see Colombia, my dad’s country of birth, play in the World Cup.
I called my dad first thing, to chat as we waited for the ticker to reach zero. The moment my dad reached the front of the line and clicked enter, the excitement felt palpable, even over the phone. Then the page buffered until bumping him back to the start.
“No way. No way,” my dad said, among other more frustrated phrases. He’s a psychologist, and had pushed an appointment with a client back to make this happen. Then he didn’t even get a chance.
“No lo puedo creer,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
Sadly, it wasn’t an April Fool's joke.
Not everyone waiting lost their chance; some made it in and found tickets. But many others had similar experiences. After two lotteries and a last-minute sales phase, we were staring down the barrel of a resale market if we wanted to see Colombia.
On the official FIFA marketplace, tickets for two games in Mexico were going for well over $1,000, unless you wanted to run the risk of purchasing through unofficial channels before people had even received their seat assignments. The only Colombia game in the U.S. is totally sold out, with resale tickets going for over $2,000.
“For a kid who had a dream of watching the World Cup, this World Cup has been financially disappointing. If I’m able to put that aside, I still get goosebumps at the fact that there will be thousands wearing different colors celebrating outside the stadiums.”
Falling in love
My dad was born in Bogota, Colombia, in 1961, and soccer quickly became an anchor in his life.
He didn’t get many chances to see his dad play soccer, but he can still recall clearly the one time he did. As the ball was in the air, his dad went up to meet it for a header.
That’s all. A brief but lasting memory that ingrained the familial and generational nature of the game.
“Futbol was like the chance to be, like when you’re reading a book, in another world,” he said. “It allowed me to completely forget anything and everything and I could be in the here and now.”
He can vividly recall watching the Brazilian national team in 1970, led by maybe the greatest to ever play, Pele, and a cohort of supremely skilled teammates, including Jairzinho and Tostão. All these names come flooding back to him, gliding through his mind as they did across his small black and white TV screen.
My dad poured himself into the game, playing constantly.
Fast forward to 1994. My dad is living in the U.S. and the nation is set to host its first World Cup.
Colombia is in the middle of a widespread cartel conflict, but the national team is a ray of light. They’ve been dubbed a tournament favorite by Pele, my dad’s idol.
“We were putting all our hopes there, but we didn't know how the dark side of the drugs and the mafia were going to ultimately influence the team,” he said.
An infamous own goal by Andrés Escobar in their group stage match against the U.S doomed Colombia, with my dad and mom in attendance. The game destroyed Colombia’s hopes and what was once a dream quickly became a nightmare as they failed to reach the knockout stages.
Escobar was killed after returning to Colombia by two cartel associates angry at the outcome. Hardened by the traumatic tournament and the harrowing aftermath, watching the national team play became a near-unbearable experience for my dad.
Different perspectives
Although my dad stopped watching as much soccer, he never stopped playing. Two years after the 1994 World Cup, I was born, and many of my earliest memories of my dad are connected to the game.
Maybe it's a pair of Adidas Samba shoes he used to play indoor soccer, or a small green ball we kicked around. I have vague but critical memories of running around the soccer field after my dad wrapped up a game.
That said, growing up in Chicago, surrounded by Bulls basketball in the twilight of the Michael Jordan-era Bulls, Cubs baseball and, later, a Blackhawks dynasty, other sports took priority.
But as I grew into my Colombian heritage, my passion for soccer blossomed.
By 2014, when I visited Colombia during their first World Cup appearance in 16 years, I was already enamored. What I saw there only stoked the coals.
Festivities in the streets, and not just one block, but everywhere in the capital. Bumper-to-bumper traffic made worse by the thousands of fans climbing through the tangle of vehicles, spraying foam and popping streamers. Nobody, save for the bus drivers with schedules to keep, seemed surprised in the slightest.
And that was all for a group stage game. I have not experienced that fervor in person again, at least not at that scale. I had to watch them play in person. I just had to.
My brother, Alex, combines my cultural fascination with my dad's passion for playing. He was born nearly 17 years after me in 2013, so we’ve got a pretty large age gap. While I’ve influenced him, he’s also had a chance to develop his own unique appreciation for the game.
“Watching soccer in general, or maybe just kicking the ball around, makes me free. It makes me feel like I'm fully intrigued by the ball, like I'm fully there,” he told me.
Alex has played from an early age, competing at high levels with MLS side Chicago Fire’s club team and the Illinois Olympic Development Program state team. It’s his dream to play professionally. He basically lives it — his room is packed with soccer jerseys, a Cristiano Ronaldo cutout and countless soccer medals.
His knowledge runs deep, too. He’s basically serving as my dad’s and my almanac for all questions about Uzbekistan and Congo, Colombia’s two opponents in Mexico. What makes me most proud is that he’s also interested in what's going on off the pitch.
“I’m excited to see the Congo fans,” Alex said. “I love to see how they act about the game, what's their true passion.”
A family affair
Once we knew where and who Colombia would play its World Cup games this year, we knew we had to go.
Colombia’s game in Miami against Portugal was always likely to be in extreme demand, two strong teams playing in a place with a strong Colombian community. Mexico was our clear choice.
A little vacation isn’t a bad thing, especially with the Argentinian National Team and its fans already taking over Kansas City as their base camp for the whole tournament. Having them around brings up bad memories of Colombia’s defeat at their hands two years ago in the Copa America Final, South America’s flagship national team tournament. Not to mention years of history playing each other in qualifiers.
When the official FIFA channels didn’t pan out for us, we established a plan to buy plane and hotel tickets, and play the waiting game on ticket prices.
Those tickets will likely end up costing more than $700 each, a far cry from the $58 my dad paid to watch the game in 1994, on top of the already booked travel expenses.
It’s been expensive and a logistical headache, but I think my brother said it best.
“Getting to watch Colombia is really cool, but it's not as cool as getting to be with my family, getting to be with the people, getting to be together,” said Alex. “It's awesome!”
In the lead-up to this World Cup and this trip, I’ve thought a lot about how blessed I am to be in a position to pay this price, to go to a game that's in demand. But even more than that, to do it with my family.
Over the past 13 years, I’ve watched my brother grow, but often from afar. College and my work took me away from Chicago. Usually, we only see each other two or three times a year.
This will be our first-ever trip together farther than a short drive to a state park or waterpark near Chicago.
And for all this time, and money, we’ll get to carry the torch for millions of anxious Colombians pouring their hopes and prayers into a squad of 26 men. And not just the living fans.
“I almost feel that my father, your grandparents, will be sitting with us, because he played soccer,” my dad said. “It’s a gift from life about different generations coming together to watch a Colombia game.”
Tickets or not, we’ll all be in Mexico.
