Youth
www.SanTanSun.com
Dec. 15 – Jan. 4, 2013
29
Tale of El Tunnél, Part I by Jourdan Rodrigue
It’s winter in Arizona, which means the only tangible seasonal change is from football to soccer. At Snedigar Sports Complex in Chandler, soccer team Bafana Bafana is making their playoff run in the Arizona Sports League men’s tournament. In the semifinals, the team faces the Sand Dragon Football Club (SDFC), a team that ages each Bafana player by at least 15 years. “Well, we dated their mothers,” says SDFC defender Ed Ribeneira, 40. The game is over early as energetic Bafana Bafana players repeatedly drive through the SDFC defense, scoring four in the first half alone. But the show has just begun. With eight minutes left in the first half, 20-year-old left outside midfielder Enrique Collazo gets the ball with room to run. It’s easy to miss him on the field at first. He’s not the loudest player, nor is he the biggest. He’s been quietly doling out passes to other players the entire half, making his runs and filling in spots as other offensive players rush the box. He begins to dance up the side of the field, weight shifting from foot to foot as he flicks the ball in and out, back and forth, a fake here, a juke there. Two defenders look like they’re standing still as he easily slides by, the ball a simple extension of his foot. A defender gets too close, legs spread
wide for balance. Collazo taps the ball through them and darts around him, the ball never leaving his foot for more than a second. He accelerates. “Oooohooo,” exclaims his father, Rudy. “Oh, excellent move, beautiful QuiQue.” He claps and moves his lawn chair to catch a few tendrils of shade. “That is ‘el tunnel,’ the tunnel, when the ball goes through the legs like that,” he says. Collazo has open field. There is nobody but the keeper in front of him, backed by the fluttering white net. “Have one,” his teammates yell. “Have a shot, Enrique!” Collazo taps the ball twice with the outside of his left foot as the keeper prepares for a shot from the right. But it sinks into the net from that left foot, toes pointed down, leg taut.
Soccer Pedigree
It was clear Collazo had a gift at a young age. “I put the ball in front of him before he could even walk well and he started poking it with his left foot—he was trying to kick it,” Rudy says. “I could see he had the blood, you know.” Collazo likes to think soccer is indeed in his blood. Rudy played for the University of Monterrey in Mexico and Enrique’s older brother, Rodolfo “Fito,” was Grand Canyon University’s top defender and currently plays professionally for indoor football club Real Phoenix.
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Collazo started playing recreationally within the city of Phoenix when he was 5. It seemed his blood was not merely coursing with a soccer pedigree, but with humility too. “I remember this one team when I was about 5 … they played in all yellow and I thought they were Brazil,” Collazo says. “I thought they were so good because of that even though we beat them.” By the time he was 8, he was skilled enough to make Arizona’s top competitive team, Sereno, and thus began a strict training regimen. “I actually tried out a year early, when I was seven,” he says. “They told me to come back the next year because I was just too small.” He began travelling the Southwest for tournaments in shin guards that reached the very tops of his knees and
disappeared under too-large shorts. Sereno won the Nomads tournament in California the year he made the team. Collazo scored the game-tying goal that allowed the team to win in penalty kicks. He hoisted a trophy almost as tall as he was and grinned the 8-year-old grin he never outgrew. “I didn’t know the level I was competing at then,” Collazo says. “To me it was just another team.”
Rematch
Twelve years later, Collazo is back to playing recreationally and another trophy is a glittering enticement on the sideline as Bafana Bafana warms up for its championship match against Celtic. Collazo is an elongated version of his 5-year-old self. He’s made up of see El Tunnél page 31