Overview:
Michael Boxall, UCSB's All-America center back, took 10 stitches and a controversial defeat at Cal during the 2010 NCAA Tournament
A game that’s played with feet is, hands-down, the most popular sport in the world.
And we’re not talking about the romantic game of footsies, for which no statistics are kept.
An estimated 250 million athletes do play soccer, and 3.5 billion more cheer them on.
Even renowned soccer-basher Jim Rome, who ascended to jock-talk fame with ESPN and now CBS Sports Radio, stopped kicking the sport around.
He backed off when soccer was embraced by two of his greatest loves: his son, Jake, and his alma mater of UC Santa Barbara.
But can soccer really unite our warring planet in a Kumbaya, “We-Are-The-World” spirit?
Former Olympian Ali Krieger thinks so, insisting that, “All it takes is a ball and a few people, and the seeds of friendship are planted.”
But recent events in Krieger’s sport have unveiled the more Freddy Krueger face of soccer.
A recurring homophobic chant from Mexico’s cheering section prompted a referee to halt its CONCACAF Nations League semifinal against the United States with four minutes still remaining.
Two other matches in Austria last week didn’t even get that far.
Ireland’s Under-21 team abandoned a match against Kuwait’s Olympic squad after a Kuwaiti player spewed racist language toward one of the Irish substitutes.
A similar dustup occurred that same day involving former UCSB star Michael Boxall of New Zealand.
A Most Unfriendly ‘Friendly’
The Kiwis had agreed to play Qatar with the good intention of preparing that Middle Eastern country for this week’s Gold Cup.
But the “friendly” turned hostile when Qatar’s Yusuf Abdurisag was fouled just five minutes before halftime.
He reportedly reacted by making an offensive remark about Boxall’s Samoan heritage.
“The racial slur was heard by several New Zealand players, including Boxall,” a New Zealand Football spokesman said.
Kiwi captain Joe Bell demanded that Abdurisag be penalized. Referee Manuel Schüttengruber insisted, however, that he hadn’t heard the slur.
“No official action was taken so the team agreed not to come out for the second half of the match,” said Andrew Pragnell, CEO for New Zealand Football. “There is no room for racism in football.”
But Qatar coach Carlos Queiroz did think there was room for discretion.
“Apparently two players exchanged words, and we don’t know who was first, who was second, it’s only between them,” Queiroz said. “The New Zealand players decided to support their teammate and we also decided to support our player.
“Let the football authorities make the decision about what happened here.”
Abdurisag’s version was that he was the victim of a racial slur during their exchange.
“During my travels around the world as a footballer I have experienced racist abuse, but never have I been both a victim and the accused in the same incident,” he said.
“It’s true that players often say things to each other in the heat of the moment, but there is a clear line that I have never crossed.”
Tempers flare in every sport. The America pastime of baseball has brewed some historic brouhahas. Throwing a rock-hard orb at the head of an adversary armed with a club is a dance that goes back to caveman days.
Boxall, the All-America senior center back for UCSB’s 2010 team, could have held his own with any neanderthal during his four seasons at the school.
Sam Garza, the Gauchos’ leading goal scorer that year, swears that he never saw the 6-foot-2 and 200-pound Kiwi “lose a 50-50 ball.”
“He’s an animal on the field,” he said. “Not many people like playing against him because he’s such a hard defender … He’s always on your back.”
I once got Boxall to admit that, “It can be satisfying to put another guy on the ground … Sometimes we do kind of get caught up in the moment and maybe play too aggressively.”
He backed down to no one. That included even Edson Buddle, the Los Angeles Galaxy star he was assigned to mark during a scrimmage in 2009.
“Boxall absolutely manhandled Buddle,” UCSB coach Tim Vom Steeg said after the match. “He couldn’t get around him.”
Boxall had played rugby before switching sports as a youngster. He even thought about trying American football if a pro soccer gig didn’t pan out.
“I love the hard-hitting, but the stops and starts frustrate me,” he said. “It is the closest thing to rugby that I get to see in this country, and so I watch it week in and week out.
“If I don’t get an opportunity to continue playing soccer down the road, it is something I’d definitely be interested in.”
Thinking Outside the Boxall
It’s no surprise that Boxall’s physicality would get under the skin of an opponent.
But nobody who knows him believes he would disparage the hue of another player’s skin.
“He’s actually a really humble guy,” Garza once said. “He can look like a rough player on the field, but he’s really a nice guy.”
That reputation has endured throughout a long pro soccer career. He works with mostly minority children as a volunteer for ACES (Athletes Committed to Educating Students).
His Minnesota United teammates have long lauded his efforts as their captain in bridging the different ethnic and religious factions on that Major League Soccer team.
“He tries to make sure everyone is in a comfortable place off the field and make sure they are doing well,” fellow defender Ide Opara said. “When he crosses the white line, he’s a different human.”
Even Boxall’s trash talk takes on a light, comedic flavor. Garza said he’d often yell out “random things in practice at the top of his lungs.”
“He’s really funny, because he’ll just do it out of nowhere … Just out of the blue,” he said during their Big West Conference championship run in 2010. “With his accent, though, he can sometimes be hard to understand.”
An Empty College Cup
Boxall had plenty to shout about during his senior year at UCSB. The Gauchos’ veteran lineup included such stars as Garza, midfielders Danny Barrera and Luis Silva, and goalkeeper Sam Hayden.
Vom Steeg had good reason to have his program come of age that season: Harder Stadium had been selected to play host to that year’s College Cup, soccer’s version of the NCAA Final Four.
“I think other programs talk about going to the national championship … We certainly have already,” he said.
“But this was different. The idea behind playing in Santa Barbara in front of 15,000-16,000 people drove this group, and it drove the coaching staff.”
UCSB invited such nationally prominent programs as Duke, Creighton and UCLA to Santa Barbara for nonconference matches that season.
A school-record 15,896 fans squeezed into Harder Stadium — the third-largest, regular-season crowd in NCAA soccer history — to watch the Gauchos beat the No. 7 Bruins, 2-0.
“The crowd that showed up to that game, I’ve never experienced such loyal fans,” Boxall said. “Even when we were struggling at the beginning of the year (going 0-2-2 over a two-week span), we still got a full turnout for the Davidson match.
“That loyalty they showed will always stay with me.”
Boxall and Hayden were the defensive stalwarts that held opponents that season to an average of just 0.73 goals per match.
The Gauchos kept their momentum going by winning the Big West Tournament and blanking Denver, 1-0, in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament.
UCSB had lost just one match in all of October and December, compiling a record of 11-1-1 those two months, before heading to Berkeley for its second-round match against Cal.
“We weren’t going to let anything stand in our way,” Vom Steeg said.
Controversy at Cal
Something unexpected, however, did block glory road for the Gauchos.
The crushing series of events began when Silva upended Golden Bears’ star Servando Carrasco with a slide tackle during the 21st minute. Carrasco jumped to his feet and struck Silva in the face with an open palm.
Head referee Mike Kampmeinert promptly pulled out a red card, signaling an automatic ejection. Every Gaucho in attendance figured it was intended for Carrasco.
But then Kampmeinert pointed at Silva.
The Cal player received only the caution of a yellow card.
“It’s a very physical game, you know?” Carrasco said during the post-game news conference. “We both want to win. He came in studs up, and that’s unfortunate.
“He got a red card and we just decided to play on. There’s nothing I can really say about that. Yes, I was mad, but it’s all part of the game.”
His anger didn’t approach the temperature of what boiled on the Gauchos’ sideline the rest of that day.
“Any referee who took as much abuse as that guy took … I mean he should’ve red-carded half our guys,” Vom Steeg said later. “Hell, he should’ve red-carded me.”
Kampmeinert told UCSB’s veteran coach that he “saw Luis’ cleats go in on him.”
The softer translation of Vom Steeg’s reply was that the referee’s eyes deceived him.
“I’ll show him the game tape,” he said. “He got the top of his foot on the ball … All ball … He went in from the front. There wasn’t even a question mark.
“He stands up and the guy cold-cocks him. So when I saw the red card coming out, I was, ‘Yeah, obviously.’ Luis was on the ground after having been punched.”
The Gauchos, playing a man down, responded with one of the most passionate performances in school history. Boxall, Hayden & Co. put their bodies on the line while turning away one attack after another.
“You saw our doctor was busy,” Vom Steeg said. “Our center back (Boxall) took 10 stitches. Our left back (Michael Tetteh) took six stiches … So that was all in a good day’s work.”
Tetteh’s sacrifice appeared to pay off when his goal broke the scoreless deadlock with 8:12 remaining.
But more controversy erupted with just 1:40 on the clock when Cal was awarded a penalty kick on a disputed hand-ball violation.
Carrasco converted the kick to send the match into overtime. The Bears’ Davis Paul then broke UCSB’s heart by scoring the game-winning goal with just one second left in the first overtime.
Soccer can be a beautiful sport, and Hector Jiménez’s assist to Davis on that dramatic play certainly qualified. But passion can often turn ugly, as it did immediately after that play.
Some Ref Going
Several Gauchos and their coaches immediately surrounded Kampmeinert and his two assistants at midfield. But Vom Steeg, sensing the rage in his players, soon sized up the danger of the situation.
“Please leave,” he told the referees. “Just go, because you just ended our season … and on this!”
The scene degraded into the theater of the absurd. The officials jumped into a stadium cart and motored off, with several Gauchos in hot pursuit. One of them even snatched some of Hayden’s goalkeeping pads and heaved them at the departing vehicle.
The NCAA sanctioned five Gauchos for their actions. Three were underclassmen who received penalties for the next year’s NCAA Tournament. The most serious was given to Machael David: a playoff suspension of three matches.
Two graduating Gauchos — Tetteh and Barrera — were also to be suspended “if they ever were to play for a school in its jurisdiction.”
Boxall hadn’t joined the pursuit with that Gaucho posse. He simply knelt beside Hayden and put his head into his hands.
I had written a column about him just a week or two earlier. I asked him to name his favorite Gaucho memory.
It was a set-up question: I figured he’d say something like, “Winning the national championship at Harder Stadium in a few weeks.”
His answer was altogether different.
“It’s not one single moment,” Boxall replied. “It’s every moment in the locker room, and every place else, just monkeying around with these guys.
“You like being part of a team, pulling pranks on each other, and all the fun stuff that goes with it.”
It can’t always be kumbaya. But Ali Krieger was right: Give a ball to a few people and just watch those seeds of friendship grow.