Elite Spanish soccer club Real Madrid practices at UCLA, a familiar locale for team coach Jose Mourinho
By Lee Witbeck
July 18, 2011 12:35 a.m.
In the middle of the hot summer months, the UCLA campus has caught football fever.
No, not the throw-and-catch kind played with an oblong, lemon-shaped ball. The kind of football played with your feet, the kind played by the rest of the world.
This fever started over a week ago, with the U.S. women’s soccer team in the group stage of the Women’s World Cup. It blossomed last Sunday, when Abby Wambach, doing her best Landon Donovan impression, saved the U.S. team’s life against talented Brazil.
And as the women of the national team enthralled America with their dramatic play and incredible heart, one of the world’s premiere club sides arrived on campus. Real Madrid Club de Fútbol took up residence on UCLA’s North Athletic Field, the patch of green behind the John Wooden Center usually reserved for Bruin soccer practices.
“Real Madrid feels at home in Los Angeles,” Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho said during a press conference this week. More likely, he meant that he feels at home in Westwood, considering this is the third team he has brought to UCLA, having housed Chelsea and Inter Milan’s training sessions here during previous coaching engagements.
So, with Mourinho in his second year with the club, this is the second year that Real Madrid has trained on UCLA’s campus. The club spent last week preparing for a rematch of last year’s friendly against the L.A. Galaxy, one of the top Major League Soccer teams.
The matchup, which took place on Saturday and was won by Real Madrid 4-1, is part of the 2011 World Football Challenge, an international football exhibition featuring top clubs from around the world as well as several MLS teams.
For the second consecutive year, the sparsely populated UCLA campus flocked to the North Athletic Field, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the club’s global superstars as they entered or left practice, or perhaps to spy through the tarps closing off the practice to the public.
Yet, this must be strange for the current Copa del Rey champions, as the crowds gathered outside their practices must feel pitifully small compared to the throngs they might face back home in Spain, or in other soccer-loving countries around the world.
After all, the team features some of the best players in the world: Cristiano Ronaldo, the second-highest paid soccer star in the world; Iker Casillas, captain and goalkeeper for the World Cup-winning Spanish national team;Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira, fixtures on the young, talented German national squad.
Here, some will know who they are; more will not. Brazilian midfielder Kaká is incredibly famous worldwide and handsomely paid for his services. On campus, he is barely recognized.
“It’s pretty awesome having them here. Kaká is a little bit boyish, though,” said Henry Murry, a fourth-year political science student. “I didn’t realize who he was for a second.”
Still, this is likely the height of interest in soccer this summer, what with the Spanish club around and the U.S. women capturing the heart of the nation. That makes the presence of Real Madrid exciting and perfectly timed.
“To have a team of that caliber visit us is pretty awesome,” said fourth-year American literature and culture student Allison Collins. “It gives us a bit of an opportunity to experience soccer the way the rest of the world sees it.”
