Go Xeneizes, go Santasticos: I've finally found my Latino clubs!

Really, I've leaned toward Boca Juniors and Santos as my football clubs (with Barcelona, of course) for a long time. Thinking about Pele and Maradona, and growing up in Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires and watching your local club become the best in the world. Imagining a young Diego Maradona watching the Blue and Gold in their magnificent Golden Age in the late 1970's as a boy, then getting to play there himself- and win a title for them. Imagining all those Argentines watching as their Boca Juniors played- and beat- all those great European clubs in 1925. And me myself, having just chosen Boca Juniors as one of my clubs, learning of them playing a match in 1906 against a team with the same colors for the rights to keep the colors, loosing, then deciding to take the colors of the next ship to enter the port- a Swedish ship, one that could have carried my ancestors to North America decades earlier.

Or imagining myself as Pele, a young black kid from the Barrios, emerging as a talent and carrying an underdog Sao Paulo club to becoming the best in the world. Or myself as one of his young- or not so young- fans watching the best player in history (along with Maradona, of course!) take one of my country's- one of my cities'- clubs to the top of the world. Or growing up with Pele's teams as a legend and getting to watch Neymar- also our National Team's best hope- lead Santasticos, the good old Fish (Piexe, appropriate for Sao Paulo's port Santos), into another Golden Era.

What a world. Go Blue and Gold, go Fish... and hooray for the new memories!

David S. Annderson