Close, but no burrito: El Farolito's miracle soccer run ends (2024)

Playing a man down since just after the start of the second half, El Farolito was unable to hold off the comeback and fell 2-1 against the Oakland Roots on Tuesday night in Hayward. The San Francisco-based, taqueria-backed team had become the darling of this year’s U.S. Open Cup after beating consecutive professional opponents in the first two rounds of the tournament.

“There’s no tomorrow, there is today; let’s give it everything we have!” head coach Santiago Lopez told his players during warmups at the Roots’ home turf at Pioneer Stadium. Assistant coach Marcos Da Silva emphasized making the Roots “feel their hunger.”

And so they did, in a 120-minute-long battle of attrition. This time, however, their solidarity and willpower came up short against their glitzy professional neighbor from across the Bay.

It was El Farolito, however, that drew first blood. Up 1-0 at the 12thminute after yet another goal by Dembor Bengtson — his fourth in the tournament out of his team’s total of five — El Farolito controlled the first half. The team, though, was less-than-stellar in the final third, and could not serve a clean ball to its forwards. The game, along with El Farolito’s strategy, was turned on its head when the Roots equalized before halftime. Compounding the problem, El Farolito lost midfielder Edgard Kreye to a second yellow card in the 51stminute.

Accustomed to pressing high and controlling ball, El Farolito was now on the back foot, trapped in its own half and left to rely on counters.

Eventually cornered in its own box — parking the bus, as one would say — the yellow-and-blue side held on until the end of regulation. A break for air and coach Lopez’s harangue did not take effect until after the 98thminute, when the Roots went up on a goal by Ali Elmasnaouy. Only then, pressed against the wall, did the El Farolito players push forward again.

A one-on-one between Bengtson and the Roots’ goalkeeper at the end of the first half of extra time put everyone on their feet. His lob was close, but a bit too wide. A red card on the Roots’ Trayvone Reid at the 106thbalanced the scales for the remaining minutes —10-on-10 soccer —but tired legs and a level of hotheadedness that comes with a chippy game did El Farolito in at the end.

After the final whistle and an exchange of pleasantries with the game winners, a few El Farolito players tore into the referees, Draymond Green-style, furious at certain decisions that they felt tilted the game against them.

Losing their nerve and sense of etiquette as the minutes went by, the El Farolito fans had already made the same point, their abuse summarized in a few “culeeeerooo” chants to the refs. (Late in the game, the Farolito fans were admonished on the loudspeakers for the repeated use of the chant “¡putoooo!” at every goal kick by the home team).

Just a few dozens in a sea of Roots supporters, the families, friends and fans of the El Farolito squad were a loud presence in the stands, outfitted in self-made yellow-and-blue merch, some blowing on yellow vuvuzelas. Playing closer to home for once, even the children of some of the players made it to the game, with the numbers of their parents written on their faces like teardrop tattoos.

Higher up in the stands, another group of supporters hung out wearing some of the most sought-after soccer merchandising of 2024: Not the trendy, colorful and easily obtained threads of the Oakland Roots, but El Farolito jerseys and sweatshirts. The owners of the collectors’ items were the old glories of thepapi fútboldays (early 2000s through mid-2010s) keeping tabs on their younger, fitter successors.

“We come to see them play with huge pride, because they reflect what we once did, and they are succeeding,” said Roberto García, 50, once a striker, now a tree trimmer up and down the Bay. He credits his stint at El Farolito for helping him clean up his act and stay sober. Alex Cruz, another contemporary, then a midfielder and now a handyman, added that “la historia pesa” (“history weighs”) and that he, like the current squad members, finds a special value in the things that are hardest to do.

“That makes them the team to beat,” he said. Alas, not on this day.

Champions of the 1993 U.S. Open Cup, back before the days of Major League Soccer, El Farolito can take solace in the talent it displayed, which coach Lopez himself has acknowledged may not be on the roster for much longer. The game may have been lost, but players, team and taqueria earned themselves some publicity, new opportunities and, deservedly, a consolation meal at the taqueria that started it all.