90 minutes of poetry, pain
Amr Ragy and Ahmed Ayad are engineers, so they are very good with numbers, and the first thing they noticed when they walked into Caffé dello Sport in the North End yesterday is that none of the three TV screens was tuned to the soccer game pitting their native Egypt against their adopted United States.
They were prepared to stay and spend, and so the bartender, Edmund Kola, had to make a decision. Two of the screens had the Italy-Brazil match on, and if Kola turned off either one of them, he’d have been thrown through the plate glass window onto Hanover Street by the assembled Italians and Brazilians.
The third TV had the Red Sox game on. Kola obligingly switched it to US-Egypt match. “I’m Albanian,’’ Kola said, shrugging, as if that explained everything.
They are holding a soccer competition in South Africa called the Confederations Cup, and it’s basically a dress rehearsal for the World Cup, which takes place in South Africa next year. Everybody at Caffé dello Sport yesterday came to see who would advance to the Confederations Cup semifinals.
The match pitting Italy, the reigning champs, against Brazil, which has won the World Cup more than any other country, was the showcase. No two countries live, eat, and breathe what everybody except Americans calls football more than Italy and Brazil. And, per capita, there might be no place in the United States with a greater confluence of the partisans of these two soccer giants than Boston.
The Brazilians were just about guaranteed a spot, so the question was whether Egypt or Italy would go through, too. The Americans hadn’t won a game yet.
Mauricio Benavente, 25, and his 21-year-old girlfriend, Valeska Lins, stood out in the crowd. They are a mixed couple: He’s Italian, she’s Brazilian. And they’re in love. With different teams.
“We both love the game, so it’s one of the things that brought us together,’’ Benavente said. He said “brought.’’ He didn’t say “keeps.’’
Watching Italians and Brazilians play soccer is like watching virtuosos play musical instruments. They play as if the ball is made of cloth and their feet of Velcro.
In the crowded café, young Italian men sat with folded arms in chairs lined up like the pews in St. Leonard’s, on the adjacent corner. But if they said any prayers, they weren’t answered. It went badly for Italy from the get-go. Luis Fabiano scored twice for Brazil, and then Andrea Dossena put it in his own net by mistake, and Brazil was up 3-0 at the half.
The second half was 45 minutes of missed chances for Italy. No one swears quite as exquisitely as Italians. It sounds like poetry. And Caffé dello Sport was full of poets yesterday. They nursed bottles of Moretti and grudges against Kaká, the brilliant Brazilian.
To make matters worse, on the other screen, the Americans were improbably scoring goals against the Egyptians. Three of them. The least-expected scenario realized itself: The Americans advanced, and the Italians went home.
You had to feel bad for Cory Stack. He was the only guy in the place wearing a USA jersey. And he was sitting next to an Italian lady who kept whacking him in the arm. “I had to hit somebody,’’ said the Italian lady, who was born Anna Cirillo in Chieti, Italy, and now lives in Pittsfield, where she is Cory Stack’s mother.
The Italian guys didn’t even bother to watch the last few minutes of the US-Egypt match. They spilled onto the sidewalk to light cigarettes, throw their hands in the air, and speak much poetry.
Over in the corner, Valeska Lins high-fived Brazilians at the next table. She glanced at her boyfriend with a mix of sympathy and superiority.
“Next year will be beautiful,’’ she said. “We’re going to South Africa for the World Cup.’’
Together?
Mauricio Benavente looked at his beautiful girlfriend for a second, and then he said, “We’ll see.’’
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com 
