Peru fans take in the match against Australia Tuesday morning.
Without fail, for ten years, Anna Echeverria has spent weekend mornings waking up before the sun.
She makes the Aji di Gallina and Papas a la Huancaina before the sun, pureeing the aji Amarillo peppers first, then adding sautéed garlic and onions and letting the chicken simmer slowly in the sauce, for added flavor.
Then she sells her food at a local Farmers Market, with a table, a few hot plates, some sauces, plastic forks and a giant Peruvian flag.
It’s a way to bolster her family income, and for many years, helped pay for her son’s involvement in local soccer clubs.
Her Saturday morning cooking routine changed two Saturdays ago, when Peru played its first World Cup match in 36 years. On that Saturday, Anna let Cabo Blanco, the longtime family-style Peruvian eatery turned World Cup headquarters in quaint downtown Hollywood, Florida, cook for her.
“Era un nuevo dia, one for much rejoicing,” Echeverria tells me, smiling in her faded red and white Jefferson Farfan shirt.
Peru’s fans were one of this tournament’s brilliant stories, from the throngs that saw them play Denmark to those who saw them triumph in Sochi.
Echeverria hasn’t missed a Peru game since the team qualified, and “tried not to” for many years before that, hoping “with magic and faith against reason,” that Peru would return to the World Cup for the first time since she was a little girl living in Lima.
Now, on a Tuesday morning where Cabo Blanco is fighting the torrid heat of a busy kitchen and the late-June South Florida furnace, Echeverria is lamenting that the fun is ending just as it began.
“It’s so difficult to explain the feeling,” she says pensively, biting her lower lip. “We’re broken-hearted, but it feels so little like heartbreak too. There’s pride and there’s accomplishment and this thought that mi gente, lo hicimos! And we can’t wait to return.”
On the television screen, Peru’s players- and a full restaurant- have just belted the Himno Nacional Del Peru for the final time at this World Cup, and the whistle is set to blow in Sochi.
Is there a venue at this marvelous World Cup that’s been more spoiled than Sochi?
This is the question I think about as I marvel over how delicious the Lomo Saltado is at Cabo Blanco, even at 10:30 in the morning.
The epic Iberian clash between Ronaldo’s Portugal and imperious Spain on the tournament’s second day. Toni Kroos’s cold-blooded free kick Saturday night, sinking Sweden, and lifting (or so it seemed at the time) reigning World Champion Germany from the brink. And Tuesday, a goodbye to gracious Peru, tournament darling resigned to one of this tournament’s unfair early departures.
“I just hope they express themselves. We are already proud. They deserve to be proud too,” Miguel Peña tells me as he pores over rocoto.
Peña is a school-teacher I met years ago when we were both based in Atlanta, me a young law-clerk and Peña with Teach for America. He grew up a few miles from Cabo Blanco, and his parents, immigrants from Lima, made Sunday family meals at Peruvian eateries a significant part of his upbringing.
When Peru clinched a playoff spot- the same night the United States missed the World Cup, the Fort Lauderdale chapter of the American Outlaws and the Peruvian supporters were at Mickey Byrne’s and Cabo Blanco, establishments that are essentially across the street from each other. As the Americans were eliminated in Couva, the Outlaws left in tears to Peruvian supporters dancing in the streets, thanks to a Hollywood Police Department that knew well-enough to re-route traffic.
“We danced and sang and carried flags, but my father, he was a boy the last time Peru won a game at a World Cup. He just fell to the curb and cried and cried,” Peña tells me. “He’s a stoic man, a disciplinary man, a religious man, a complicated man. It was if all his sacrifices and frustrations were somehow better. It was more than futbol. It was about joy in Peru, a way of being proud of home.”
Peña is sad that the home of his birth, the United States, missed the World Cup. He loves Michael Bradley and believes the core of young Americans, led by Christian Pulisic, will restore sanity. He rejects the idea he can’t love and support both, even if the pull of his parents’ home makes his love for Peru’s national team tug a bit harder.
“I would have cheered for both, and until the last moment, I thought I’d have the chance,” Peña tells me. “I thought the US would be fine, especially after Bradley scored the divine chip in Mexico and they got the point (referring to the US tie in Mexico last June). They weren’t. But with players like Pulisic and (New York Red Bulls midfielder) Tyler Adams, it’s hard to say the future isn’t going to be beautiful.”
Any venue that enjoyed Peruvian soccer at this World Cup saw something beautiful, and the fans who watched across the world were left with an indelible memory, from the mesmerizing, cohesive attacking but sadly profligate football played by La Blanquirroja as they played their first World Cup match since 1982 against Denmark in Saransk to the pulsating, record-breaking in number and pride group of supporters that roared them on in a narrow defeat to France in Yekaterinburg to Tuesday in Sochi, when Peru finally got the goal, and the win, it deserved.
Might as well be in Lima, to be honest. Peruvians everywhere. That will be the title of the official FIFA film of this tournament. pic.twitter.com/bjw3tnVu7W
— Rory Smith (@RorySmith) June 21, 2018
La Blanquirroja earned this moment, for themselves and for their football-crazed nation and her joyous people, when they snatched a playoff spot in brutal CONMEBOL on the final match day, then weathered a physical, cagey playoff against New Zealand to reach their first World Cup since Teofilo Cubillas led the Peruvians to Spain in 1982.
They were must see TV while in Russia, and for those who didn’t watch the high-pressing, frenetic Chileans barnstorm their way to two Copa América titles in 2015 and 2016, a throwback to the truly mesmerizing South American sides of my father’s youth, ones that made magic playing collaborative, beautiful football where all players understand movement and play with and for each other has been lacking.
The game has changed, and it’s been 16 years since a team from beyond the old firm wall of Europe lifted the World Cup.
To be sure, Latin America and South America still produce breathtaking talents, Neymar, Messi, Suarez, Gabriel Jesus, and conspicuously, sadly absent from these proceedings, Alexis Sánchez.
This isn’t to say Peru don’t have lovely, singular talents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm4dD7sUAf0
This goal- scored against a World Cup group winner in Croatia- comes for Christian Cueva, the late-blooming jitterbug of a number ten who plays his professional club football for Brazilian power São Paulo FC.
Cueva missed a penalty in the Denmark game that likely altered the fortunes of Peru’s World Cup, and was seen seated on the Saransk turf, in tears, when the final whistle sounded in the Danes 1-0 win.
He was marvelous Tuesday, however, consistently getting in between the Australian lines and menacing the Socceroos defense, creating a host of chances and constantly looking like a threat to score.
Also brilliant was Paolo Guerrero, the 34-year-old forward who had a funky cup of tea and didn’t know until the last minute if he’d be able to join his teammates in Russia. In a rare moment of good conscience, FIFA did the right thing, clearing the suspended captain and affording him a moment on the world’s stage that maybe more than any Peruvian player, he’d sweat and bled and sacrificed to have.
It was also a redemptive performance for Guerrero, whose first-half giveaway had set up the sequence leading to the Kylian Mbappe winner against France. Guerrero isn’t the 20-something with the blend of speed, power and technique who barnstormed the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and Hamburger anymore, and in truth, hasn’t been for a couple years. But in what was perhaps his final appearance in a Peruvian shirt, he delivered a masterpiece for posterity Tuesday, latching onto a long pass and powering a cross to Andre Carrillo on Peru’s opener and then ripping a delicious volley on a half-turn for Peru’s second goal.
In the end, Peru had their first victory in a World Cup since 1978, and their first away from South American soil since the 1970 tournament in Mexico.
They deserved more from this World Cup, truth be told. They outplayed Denmark and lost, then stood toe-to-toe with pre-tournament favorite France in the second game, only to be punished for Guerrero’s early mistake and see N’Golo Kanté, the space-eating, forward swallowing French defensive midfielder, choke off wave after wave of Peru’s rally in the second game.
But at least they left with full spoils in a win over Australia.
It was enough to bring Anna’s daughter, Isabella, to tears.
“I don’t want it to end,” she says. “But we leave heads high, winners, with joy in our hearts.”
And respect and affection from all who watched them.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.