A friendly game between former players of two professional Mexican soccer clubs on Sunday afternoon, June 25, at Eddie West Field in Santa Ana turned violent when dozens of fans rushed the field and began beating each other, forcing authorities to suspend the match, according to the O.C. Register.
The “game of legends” featured former Club America and Pumas players was supposed to benefit Santa Ana-based United Soccer Talents Foundation, which supports soccer players.
We posted a short video about this fight on our Facebook page yesterday and the comments really blew up. I was surprised that some of our readers appeared to be mad at the police – not at the rioting soccer fans.
Needless to say this episode is an embarrassment to the City of Santa Ana and a black eye on all of us. The timing of this is awful as our President, Donald Trump, has been ripping Mexicans for exactly this sort of behavior.
The majority of residents in Santa Ana are Latinos and many of them are immigrants, not just from Mexico but also from Central and South America. Most of these immigrants are law-abiding families who are trying to survive in a city with not enough affordable housing. Granted we have quite a few undocumented residents but that does not mean that they are criminals.
The folks who decided to riot at this charity game should be maligned for this ridiculous behavior. This episode is not the fault of our police. It is the fault of the folks who decided to act like crazed beasts at a public forum.
I have to wonder to what extent alcohol might have been involved in Sunday’s soccer debacle? I don’t know if alcoholic beverages were sold at Eddie West Field or if folks just got their drink on before the game. But it is a fact that drinking too much alcohol can unleash your inner monster – and that sure seems like what happened on Sunday. If alcohol was sold at this match the city needs to reconsider that policy and ban alcoholic drinks at Eddie West Field if they are not already banned.
There was apparently not enough security at the soccer match – and that is a problem that should not be repeated. By now our police department and city planning agency should know that an event like this demands a lot more security than a high school graduation.
There is indeed a grand passion for soccer in Mexico to an extent we don’t understand here in the U.S. although so many of our kids play youth soccer. The only possible analogy would be the American love for American football – but that is being driven mostly by online gambling and fantasy football. Mexicans love soccer for so many more reasons – it is an emotional process and as we saw on Sunday the fans can at times take this way too far.
This fight made us all look bad. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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It is called Third World mentality. Such mentality prevails in sanctuary cities such as Santa Ana. It prevails not only in soccer fields but also in everyday life.
@Jorge Rocha
Are you serious? Do you live in some kind of bubble? These types of fights occur all over the country, and why should we stop there, ever heard of Manchester United hooligans. Have you never seen a Major League bench clearing fights or a YouTube video of parents and coaches fighting during little league games in middle america. These fights don’t just occur in soccer/futbol or baseball or football etc, are we supposed to say that Major League baseball players also suffer from this supposed 3rd world mentality. Comments like these are just plain ignorance.
I am not defending the fight or the instigators or the police or the supposed drinking or supposed pre-game drinking. I know for a fact that fights like this happened all over the country and world and as far back as humans have been playing sports and the answer as to why this occurs is more complicated and cant be explained away with simple one dimensional mentality comments like “It is called Third World mentality”, last time I checked England and the US were not third world countries. Not sure which is worse the instigators of this fight or ignorance like this that breeds more ignorance.
According to the register, no alcohol was served. Still, I'm sure people "pre gamed it" in the parking lot or their house before work. I was driving by Flower and Civic Center around 2:30 pm or so and about 200 - 300 people were walking in the middle of the street, protest style on their way to the game, completely shutting down traffic, and they were all proud of it. Sad thing is, now the next time organizer's want to put something like this together, they'll think twice because I'm sure the city will now require them to pay for about 100 officers to be on duty (on overtime) plus their own private security. I read somewhere that the rental of the stadium cost the organizers almost $26,000! These idiots ruined it for everyone. I tend to agree with Mr. Rocha about that 3rd world mentality. The people who ran onto the field acted like savages! Did you see how they were kicking a guy who was already down on the ground?! And out of those arrested, 4 weren't even from here! Santa Ana is definitely a Sanctuary City, too bad it's for the criminals!
See what I mean, ignorance breeds ignorance. Again this has nothing to do with sanctuary cities. It is a societal issue that is present in nearly all societies that spam the world. It has nothing to do with being a savage or being civilized. It is simple minded thinking to believe this only occurs in sanctuary cities. You either suffer from selective memory, or manipulate what you read to fit your own ignorant mentality. Do you recall the Huntington Beach rioting that occurred following the U.S. Open of Surfing? Last time I check HB is not a sanctuary city many of those young kids out there rioting where white.
One of your fallacies is trying to make a correlation between this fight or crime and sanctuary cities, any well-read person or duly informed individual will know that crime has nothing to do with being a sanctuary city. Are we to assume that the rest of the world has no crime outside of sanctuary cities? This is just plain ignorance again. Small minded thinking like this is what leads to segregation, apartheid, hate, etc.
Really? You ranted about 1 line in my post? I know crime is everywhere, and I know that just because Santa Ana is a sanctuary city, it isn't the reason they rioted. Did you see the video? Those people acted like uncivilized savages! Kicking a guy while he's already down and knocked out, how is that civilized? They did ruin this for everyone. It reminds me of the homicide a few years ago where a guy was drunk and killed the wrong guy because of who's state in Mexico was better, unnecessary violence!
Yes, I did rant about 1 line. Your whole post was so you can state that one line, so of course I am going to point out the fallacies in your argument. Reason being because it you are trying to correlate the fact that Santa Ana is a sanctuary city and that there was a criminal act, you wanted to tie the two together so you could make your point.
Regarding your original post, what does being out of town and committing a crime have anything to do with SA being a sanctuary city. Absolutely nothing, you are seriously reaching with these types of comments, you are trying to instigate, divide, and finger point with no factual basis behind your comment and that is why ranted.
As far as the video goes, I did see it, several times, but did you notice that nearly all of the crown didn’t get involved in any criminal manner, did you see those people trying to stop the ones fighting and not just security and police, that is also what a sanctuary city creates, humans that care for one another and will put themselves in the way of injustice. That is what it is to be a sanctuary city, Yet you only focus on the negative and want to blame the fact that SA is a sanctuary city, what about stating that the people behind the event and people who showed up are also part of a sanctuary city. You don't because it doesn't back up what you want to prove. That sanctuary cities are bad and riddled with crime and allows criminals to roam free, and yes I know you didn't state this but come on, people who whine about sanctuary cities tend to think along the same lines when it comes to this topic.
SA is a santuary city because some laws need to be broken. Just because something is a law, it doesn’t make it right, or moral, or civilized.
As MLK wrote “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” I am not equating that what is occurring here is what occurred in Germany, but that laws are not always just and that what the state says is not always the right thing to do.
It could be semantics but I am not sure what your point is regarding the attackers being “civilized” that is a whole different discussions that tends to be Eurocentric in nature. Since it is Europeans that have historically thrown that word around all over the world in order to feel superior to everyone else, yet they have also historically been the perpetrators of some of the world’s greatest atrocities toward human kind.
What homicide are you talking about, are you just trying to bring up something that might not have actually happen to support your point. You provided no evidence of this supposed crime or how it is tied to this post.
It starts at the top when you have a city council that can't get its act together and a city plan
that has an underlying agenda to reconfigure its ethnic structure what can you expect. Not to
mention a mayor who is a ghost to the community and is aligned to a minority that is not exactly brown.