Columbus is main character in 'Good Rivals' soccer documentary | Michael Arace
In a certain corner of Columbus, Jon Weinbach’s name might be recognizable for a 2007 story he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, "Inside College Sports Biggest Money Machine," about Ohio State’s $109-million athletics budget. Of course, that was a long time ago. The Buckeyes’ athletics budget has since doubled. Inflation.
Weinbach went on to ESPN, where he wrote, produced and directed 30 for 30 documentaries, among other projects. It was an ESPN assignment that brought him to Columbus for what became known as La Guerra Fria. It was a World Cup qualifier between the U.S. and Mexico, played in frigid conditions at Crew Stadium in February 2001, and it took a hemispheric rivalry to a new level. It helped establish the legends of “Dos a Cero” and Fortress Columbus – where a true home field, stacked with Red, White & Blue supporters in the heartland of America, was established for the U.S. national teams.
“I’ve never been colder at a sporting event,” Weinbach said.
Weinbach, now an LA-based developer of sports-entertainment content, has a basketball jones. He co-produced The Last Dance, among other award-winning projects. He calls his latest project, "Good Rivals," and it's about the history of the U.S.-Mexico rivalry, “manna from heaven” for two reasons: One, the offer to co-produce came out of the blue and, two, it was a “dream project” for the self-described soccer freak. He is 46 years old and he has been following the USMNT for most of his life.
“I was a fan when you had to apologize for it,” he said. “Now, you don’t have to watch games in Spanish on tape delay. Now, we have a place. ... I wanted this project to be meaningful and significant.”
"Good Rivals" will be released on Amazon Prime on Thanksgiving Day. It will be screened at the new Crew stadium the next day, Black Friday, as part of the team’s World Cup viewing parties. The Crew will be opening areas of Lower.com Field for 22 days, and airing 54 games, during the world’s biggest sporting event. For more details, go to columbuscrew.com/prideandglory.
In 2002, more than 25,000 fans at the old Crew Stadium watched 64 matches from the World Cup played in South Korea. That was the tournament when the USMNT defeated Mexico 2-0 in the Round of 16.
"Good Rivals" goes deep inside that game, as it does with every chapter in the rivalry, which is littered with the confetti of red cards. I screened two of the three episodes. It’s riveting stuff, largely narrated by the participants – Gregg Berhalter, Frankie Hejduk, Claudio Reyna, Cobi Jones, DeMarcus Beasley, Josh Wolff, et al. The Mexican side is evenly represented. Politicians, historians and journalists from both sides of the border supply background.
Weinbach is an old hand at placing sports in a larger context of changing times, evolving history and, in this case, the ever-shifting relationship between the United States and Mexico. The border wall is a recurring, haunting image in "Good Rivals."
“No rivalry is as unique as this,” Weinbach said. “There is the sporting component, the border politics, the social and cultural dynamics. It’s a unique study of the U.S. vis a vis Mexico, which for 220 odd years has had one thing on the U.S. – soccer.”
It’s only a rivalry if the other side starts winning, and in this century, the scale has tipped to the north. Thus, Fortress Columbus – the site of four U.S. victories in World Cup qualifiers, each by a 2-0 score– is as much a character in the docuseries as is Estadio Azteca.
When the Columbus streak ended in 2016, with Rafael Marquez supplying the game-winner for Mexico, Stuart Holden, the former U.S. international and current Fox analyst, spices the epitaph with an epithet (insert it where you will): “It had to be Marquez.”
Said Weinbach, “You can say England-Germany is a bigger rivalry, but there aren’t 30 million Germans living in England, and supporting Germany to beat England. There aren’t 30 million Brazilians living in Argentina. Here, we have cohorts of kids who are dual citizens, with torn allegiances. We’re physical neighbors. There’s an interplay of politics, culture and sport that’s really unique.”
That interplay is best described by Landon Donovan, who grew up playing with Mexican kids in Redlands, Calif., and Rafa Marquez, whose family in Zamora, Mexico, was “abandoned” by his grandfather – who moved to the U.S. to find a better life.
Marquez might be the Mexican player that American fans most love to hate. The reciprocal is true of Donovan, who is the star of Good Rivals. Donovan’s candor is at every turn breathtaking – especially when he recounts the time he was cut from the national team, by Jurgen Klinsmann, in 2014. It is Donovan who gives a well-crafted, multifaceted story its last full measure of veracity, so much so that even an appearance by Don Garber can be overcome.
Two thumbs up.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: USMNT-Mexico rivalry is put in a larger context in three-part series
