Leagues of Their Own

Written by Christina E. Rodriguez | 10 August 2009

At 13, Danny Muñoz was facing problems at home. His parents were hitting a major rough spot and his 19-year-old sister had just moved out with her boyfriend. All Muñoz wanted to do was to escape those problems.

He started playing soccer as a way to stay sane. “As soon as I started playing soccer, my life changed,” says Muñoz, now 24 and a St. Xavier University graduate. “It was all about soccer. It was an outlet; more [like a] therapy.”

More than simply a way to release stress, soccer became an excuse to stay away from the woes plaguing his family. “I would just spend all day at the park playing pickup games with younger guys, older guys, kids, anyone,” says Muñoz. “I was there just playing, [even] eating at the park.”

While attending De La Salle Institute on Chicago’s South Side, his soccer team began playing at ChiTown Futbol, an indoor facility in the Pilsen neighborhood. Once he started playing there, he couldn’t get away. “From that point on, I’ve been on teams and now I work here,” he says.

Muñoz is a coach for Lil’ Kickers, a program geared toward children from 18 months to 9 years old, and has been working at ChiTown for the last 2 1/2 years. His boss, Jose Perez, calls him an adopted son and is usually teased for treating him better than he does his own three sons.

Perez became co-owner of ChiTown in 2003, two years after it opened. Because of his experience playing the game, Perez has adopted soccer as an outlet and way of life. “Soccer is not a sport, it’s a religion,” says Perez, who has been playing since he was 5. “Once you start playing soccer and you understand it, you can’t give it up. It’s that simple.”

The indoor soccer facility is open seven days a week and has three fields: two large ones and one small one for the youth groups. Whistles blow constantly and cheers from the sidelines bounce off the walls. People from all walks of life gather to cheer, socialize and play their weekly games. A line forms at La Cascarita, the food court, and arcade games line the walls.

ChiTown hosts five leagues with about 36 teams in each league. Each team holds about 15 players, give or take a few, mostly adults. The biggest days for the children’s leagues are over the weekend.

“Once you learn and grow with it, it becomes a passion,” says Perez, who will turn 51 this summer. “[My son] doesn’t want to get up and go to school [during] the week, but he was here with me at 6:30 in the morning [on a Saturday].”

UNIVERSAL APPEAL
According to Judith McLean, executive director of the Illinois State Soccer Association, a significant number of Latino leagues operate in the area although not all are affiliated with ISSA (ChiTown being an example), although Latinos do play within teams that are not distinctly Latino.

Rigoberto Barajas, 23, plays for Real Michoacan, a team run by the Chicago Latin American Soccer Association, which affiliated with ISSA in 1972. He also plays for the B-H Lilies, a Bosnian team affiliated with ISSA's National Soccer League. "It's a lot more competitive," says Barajas. "It's more European, while CLASA is all Hispanic."

He and his brother Fernando have been playing soccer since they were 5 years old because their father introduced them to the sport. "It kept us off the streets," says Rigoberto. "Growing up in Cicero, if you hung out on the streets a gang would find you."

When it comes to playing soccer among European players, Barajas says that he's never felt out of the loop on the Lilies; although it's a Bosnian team that speaks a different language, teammates translate for him. "You start to pick it up and kind of understand what they're talking about," he says.

The Illinois soccer association is comprised of more than 27 leagues, 400 teams and about 55,000 participants, while CLASA is comprised of 130 clubs, 340 teams, 7,000 registered players and 20,000 associates in the Chicagoland area. But the Barajas brothers say the sport is still growing. Across the United States, an estimated 18 million play soccer, according to the 2003 Superstudy of Sports Participation.

“Soccer doesn’t take much equipment, it requires fluidity of thought and movement from everyone on the field,” says ISSA’s McLean, “and it is cheaper than most sports.”

Among other attractions to the sport, McLean says the social aspect keeps people in the game. Perez makes friends with those he plays with. He has been on teams with his sons as well, mixing the ages and talent of the individuals.

If the game keeps people active, social and virtually in love, why is it that mainstream USA doesn’t pay attention to the fact that this is one of the biggest participatory sports in the country? ”While more people are playing soccer, it has not necessarily meant more people are watching it on mainstream TV,” says McLean. “Certainly the media coverage [and] interest is not traditionally there.”

However, to Perez the issue is much simpler. “Americans have a hard time [because they are] controlling,” says Perez. “If they don’t play by their rules, they don’t want to play.” The global organization FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, governs the sport. It keeps the guidelines and the rules, and has the last say in any dispute within the soccer world.

“The Americans don’t like that,” says Perez “They want to change the rules. So FIFA said, ‘Make your own league,’ which is the MLS.” In Major League Soccer, teams can play under American guidelines.

But because the World Cup is FIFA’s product, the United States has to be affiliated with FIFA in order to participate, therefore changing their rules back to match the universal ones we see on television. That’s what makes the sport so universal. Anywhere you play, from Brazil to China, the same rules are used.

Soccer has been in the United States for decades. The ISSA has records of teams and leagues being formed in Illinois as early as 1890, primarily by immigrants from Western Europe.

“By the early 1970s Latino players from all over Central and South America were playing in significant numbers,” says McLean. “The most organized league at that time was CLASA, which still consists of primarily Mexican-born players.”

In this day and age, the world continues to grow smaller, especially in the soccer realm. "On any given night, you see English uniforms, German uniforms, Netherland uniforms, Mexican uniforms,” says Perez about ChiTown. “That only shows you how small the world has gotten. You’re no longer watching just one league; you’re watching the whole world.”

“More diverse leagues … have incorporated players and teams of all ethnicity, background and every conceivable socioeconomic group to highlight one of soccer’s strengths,” McLean explains, “that it is truly a world sport and that it transcends all the usual boundaries.”

Muñoz claims that soccer is the universal sport. When you ask him who his favorite player is, he asks, “From which league?”

And when he’s not playing or working, he’s watching soccer. “[My schedule is] work, workout, soccer and the same thing the next day,” he says. “One way or another, it turns out to be soccer.”