The Match We Missed

It was supposed to be the night of our lives.

August 1st. Cruz Azul vs. Seattle Sounders. My dad had been talking about the match for weeks, maybe months. It wasn’t just football to him—it was a connection to everything he left behind in Mexico, to the nights he listened to the roar of Estadio Azteca on a cheap radio under the desert stars, back when his life was just dust, dreams, and dirty work gloves.

For me, it was just supposed to be our night. No work. No bills. No fighting. No sickness. Just the two of us, beers for him, sodas for me, yelling at the screen and pretending the walls of our tiny apartment didn’t close in every time silence lasted too long.

He bought the tickets in June. Two seats, halfway up, midfield view like a miracle wrapped in barcodes and crinkled paper. He kept them in the inside pocket of his old denim jacket, close to his heart.

But in July, his cough returned.

It started like last time harmless, like clearing your throat after too much salsa. But by the second week, it came in fits, shaking him like a tree in a storm. I caught him wheezing outside the laundromat one evening. He smiled, teeth gritted, sweat soaking through his baseball cap.

“Still going,” he said.

I wanted to believe him.

He promised me we’d still go. Even when he was admitted to the hospital. Even when the doctors kept using words like “aggressive,” “late-stage,” and “treatment failure.” He’d whisper from his bed, “Cruz Azul’s got it this time. I can feel it.”

On July 30th, the nurse told me I should prepare.

I didn’t know what that meant how does a 17-year-old “prepare” to lose the only parent he’s ever known?

That night, I sat by his bed. The room smelled like metal and antiseptic. On the TV, a different game played in the background teams I didn’t care about, people I didn’t know.

He looked smaller than I remembered. Like the game had left him behind.

“They play tomorrow night,” I whispered.

His eyes fluttered open. “We’ll watch it together, mijo. Bring the tickets. Let’s watch it here.”

“But we’re not going to the stadium?”

He smiled, weak but real. “They’re still your seats. Use them.”

“No,” I said. “Not without you.”

He drifted off again.

The next morning, he was gone.

And the tickets? Still in his jacket pocket, right where he left them.

I didn’t go to the game.

I didn’t sell the tickets.

Instead, I walked to our neighborhood’s scrappy concrete field the same one where he taught me how to kick with both feet, how to shield the ball, how to play with corazón. I sat on the bleachers with a small radio and listened to the broadcast in Spanish, just like he used to.

Cruz Azul won.

I cried harder than I ever had in my life.

In the weeks that followed, people asked me the same question in different ways:

“You doing okay?”

“Are you staying in school?”

“Do you need anything?”

But none of it mattered. Because I couldn’t answer the only question I wanted someone to ask me:

What do you do when the person who taught you how to love something isn’t there to love it with you anymore?

It took months, but I found a way.

I started coaching the under-10 kids at the community center. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, I wore Dad’s jacket and taught them the same drills he taught me. We didn’t have a real field, just patchy grass and traffic cones. But it didn’t matter.

They started calling me Coach Azul.

I smiled every time they did.

This year, on the anniversary of that match, Cruz Azul came to town again.

I didn’t buy a ticket.

Instead, I gathered the kids, set up a projector in the alley near the center, and streamed the game live.

They wore mismatched jerseys. Some didn’t even know the rules. But they cheered. They laughed. They passed around soda and stale chips and made the kind of noise my father would’ve called heaven.

When the final whistle blew, I looked up at the stars.

“I kept your seat warm,” I whispered.