Repeated around the country, the charming story of the El Farolito Burrito Boys — putting salsa into soccer and making comebacks look as easy as flipping a tortilla — becomes a little less darling when opponents realize they are for real.
“That’s the part I love,” said Sebastián Yabur, 25, the Colombian right-back for El Farolito.“They look down on us as an equipo de barrio — but we continue to surprise them.”
On March 19, El Farolito became an international story when the squad beat the B-team for Major League Soccer’s Portland Timbers, in Portland, 2-1.
Then, on April 2, El Farolito downed Central Valley Fuego 2-1 in Merced on an 88th-minute goal — becoming the first amateur side to upset consecutive professional opponents in this year’s U.S. Open Cup competition (a Miami team subsequently equaled the feat).
The Mission taqueria’s soccer affiliate will go for a third straight win over professional opponents on Tuesday, when they face the Oakland Roots at Cal State East Bay’s Pioneer Stadium in Hayward. That’s the same venue where the Roots dispatched them, 3-1, in the second round of last year’s tournament.
Both teams clashed again this preseason, a 1-0 victory for the Roots. But neither coach Santiago Lopez nor his players are reading too much into the preamble.
“We were not yet settled in the scheme and the strategy,” said Lopez shortly after finding out who their next rivals were. “Now it is clearer, everyone understands their individual work, and we look like an organized unit.”
Despite their early struggles in the 2024 United Soccer League season — the five-year-old Oakland squad is currently ranked ninth out of 12 teams in the Western Conference — the Roots remain the sponsorship-rich, fully televised pro team in the matchup. And, therefore, still the favorite. But, with two comeback wins so far in the U.S. Open Cup, and a sometimes suffocating pressing style, El Farolito has sent its message: You will have to outwork us.
Strength in lifetimes
Soccer observers have noted how El Farolito often looked like the professional side in its first- and second-round games. That reputation for intensity extends to team practice sessions. That was the case on a recent Thursday on the damp turf of the Silver Terrace Athletic Field at Silver Avenue and Bayshore Boulevard in the San Francisco neighborhood of the same name. There, the 30-strong roster sprinted, darted and dashed under a torrential downpour atypical of an April night. For all of their on-the-field understanding, there was little else than a shorthand of shouts, laughs and complaints. Collectively, they knew more than they were saying.
It doesn’t hurt that two-thirds of the squad have already been playing together for a couple of seasons.
“We really work very well on and off the field,” said Gabriel Arias, 24, a worker at an electric company in Hayward by day, and an offensive midfielder in coach Lopez’s scheme by night. This is his fourth season with the team, a continuity he credits for the superior understanding between players young and old, veterans or new to the team but willing to buy into the culture.
“You often find teams where someone wants to show off more, but not here,” he explained. “If someone makes a mistake, we all support them. We got each other.”
The sentiment is echoed by Sacre Kipré, 21, one of four Ivory Coast nationals who joined El Farolito this season. “The team is amateur, but they act like professionals, train like professionals, and soccer is the same language everywhere, although my Spanish will be better in a month.”
None of the francophone journeymen are older than 24, but they’ve already made many stops on their soccer journeys: Their professional careers have taken them to Spain, Greece, Austria, Israel, Connecticut and, finally, San Francisco (though they live in Daly City). Aspiring to earn another shot at the pro leagues, they are among the few players on El Farolito’s roster dedicated 100 percent to soccer and the graces of invisible training, namely resting. Their savings from various prior pro gigs can take care of this financial lull, for now.
Dembor Bengtson, the 28-year-old Honduran striker and top scorer of this Open Cup campaign (three goals), grew up in his country’s youth national team ranks, played for the top teams in the local league, and still has two siblings representing “La Bicolor” internationally. In a way, so does he, currently in his fourth season with El Farolito. He moved to South Hayward four years ago, after some time languishing in the Honduran league.
“For us with family, in my case a wife and three children, it is much harder to keep up with the salaries, which cannot compare with what one can make here,” he said.
This season — his best so far — happens to find him in a bit of an occupational limbo. Bengtson worked as a cook at an Italian restaurant until a hand injury sidelined him indefinitely. He would like to return to his job, but he would also want to find his way back to playing professional ball. So would Sebastián Yabur, his partner-in-crime, a product of Colombian giant Atlético Nacional’s youth system and league champion in Venezuela, who came to the Bay Area to rekindle his best level and get back on track.
“Dale con fe,” they tell each other before every corner kick, in practice and during games. “Go with faith.”
Contract-less and free to leave anytime they desire, they remain loyal to each other and to the common goal this season. But coach Lopez knows their ambitions are two-fold, and that a better campaign will mean a higher churn rate at the end of the season.
“I just hope I can help the Farolito players to put themselves out there, gain that publicity, and give them the opportunity to go somewhere else,” he said.
‘Just us!‘
Soccer may be the same language everywhere, but Yabur, still new to the team, talks of another shared vernacular: “Sacrifice.” It goes beyond running for longer or risking one’s body to win a loose ball.
“It’s not just that we’re mostly Latinos, but that we have a lot of professional experience in the team that makes it easy. We know what it takes, and it makes us feel united at critical moments. We know about each other, our children, our families. How many of us are alone here and how this team has that family warmth,” he explained.
A life-earned savviness wrapped in gentle prodding, according to the midfielder Arias, has elevated the less worldly teammates around them. Guiding them, correcting them, making them care about the right things.
“This team of burritos and tacos works very hard to win its games, so being called like that makes us even prouder and more motivated to put El Farolito in the highest place possible,” he said.
“It’s primero nosotros, segundo nosotros, tercero nosotros,” added Yabur. “Nothing else matters.”
Lopez, the team’s coach, and general manager for El Farolito’s dozen taquerías, has been putting in the extra hours studying tape of their next opponents and sharing it with his players. And, while he can’t reveal strategic secrets, he can divulge a marketing strategy: “We won’t stream the next game at the restaurants, because we want people to go to the game.”
This will be the first game in El Farolito’s U.S. Open Cup run to be within driving or BARTing distance of the team’s San Francisco home. Lopez and the boys urge you to see them next at Pioneer Stadium, April 16 at 7:30 p.m. You know the drill.