Cienfuegos Will Set the Tempo for Galaxy Against Fire
He may be the best-known, least-known athlete in Los Angeles.
Depending on the neighborhood, Mauricio Cienfuegos can walk down a street and be mobbed by fans--or ignored entirely.
He can be seen for what he is, the most successful soccer player ever to come out of El Salvador. Or he can be overlooked as another face in the crowd.
And that’s not a bad thing.
In a city cluttered with celebrities--real and imagined--Major League Soccer’s most successful import and least pretentious star can be as famous or as anonymous as he likes.
Tonight, when the Galaxy plays the Chicago Fire in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, Cienfuegos will be recognized immediately by the 20,000 or so fans inside the Rose Bowl.
Outside the stadium, however, he could be just another spectator coming to see his team play. Cienfuegos, 30, does not look like an athlete. Not in this country, where sporting expectations often are measured by height and weight, or bulk and brawn.
Cienfuegos is 5 feet 5 and 140 pounds.
But his size has not stopped him from having an 11-year, three-continent professional career with teams in El Salvador, Mexico and, now, the United States. Nor did it prevent him from representing his country more than 90 times in international play until he retired from the national team last spring.
And it certainly has not stopped him from being the Galaxy’s most valuable asset the last three seasons. If the Galaxy were an orchestra, Cienfuegos would be its conductor. He is the player around whom the team revolves and the one the Fire will have to keep in check if it is to have a chance in the best-of-three series.
In 1996, the Galaxy’s first season, blue and white Salvadoran flags dotted the Rose Bowl. Now, Galaxy colors prevail. The city--or at least a part of it--has taken to the team, just as Cienfuegos has taken to the city.
“In terms of living, it’s not really that much different [from San Salvador, where he was born] because here there are more than 1 million Salvadorans,” Cienfuegos said of Los Angeles. “A lot of people have given me a lot of support and I feel at home. I always run into people who are from my country.”
But at least in Los Angeles he can escape. On Friday, for example, he took his wife, Reyna, and their three children to Descanso Gardens and enjoyed a hassle-free afternoon.
Central America, all too often impoverished or war-torn, did not always provide such oases of calm.
“In El Salvador, I was part of the privileged few because I played soccer and I excelled at my sport,” he said. “I had a lot of privileges that a lot of people in my country didn’t have. When I lived there, I made a decent living and I had no problems.
“But living here in the States, we have a sense of security, both economic and personal, that we might not have in my country.”
Especially not during the era of the death squads and the turmoil of the 1980s and early ‘90s.
“Even though I was in the middle of a civil war, soccer shielded me from it,” Cienfuegos said, adding that he had purposely not taken a stance on the conflict.
“I never spoke out because I didn’t know what the interests were on either side,” he said. “I didn’t know the backdoor politics of what was going on, so it was better to just keep quiet. A lot of times in a country like mine, politics is a very dirty business, so I’d rather stay away from it.”
In any case, soccer, not politics, was his passion. He started playing when he was 4 or 5, turned professional at 17 and decided against studying civil engineering to pursue a soccer career.
His size was never a drawback.
“Some coaches worry about height, but that’s their mistake,” he said. “Soccer is played with the mind. It’s a mental game and your feet are only tools. It’s not what size you are but how strategically you play the game.”
For Cienfuegos, the game is meant to be enjoyed, not only by fans but by the players. His favorite soccer memories are not about his days with the national team--he made his debut for El Salvador against Guatemala in 1987--but go back to his childhood.
“When I was 7 or 8, I played with boys who were much older than me and we would start playing at about 6 in the morning and then play three or four games straight until about 1 in the afternoon,” he said.
“That year we played about 50 games and nobody beat us. There were about 20 or 25 of us. That’s something I’ll always remember. Some of the friends I made then are still friends today. We always look back on that year.”
In San Salvador, at a park or in the streets and alleyways, Cienfuegos learned the skills that fans would marvel at in years to come.
“That’s where you really learn the feeling of playing soccer,” he said. “Because you’re playing in such limited, tight conditions, you learn how to dribble, short passing, how to fake and feint.”
In short, all the skills that make him both an exciting player to watch and a dangerous opponent.
Cienfuegos’ Galaxy teammates are well aware of his value.
“When Cien is not here, the team struggles,” said Guatemalan midfielder Martin Machon. “Offensively, we have trouble. He’s our playmaker and a lot of our plays have to go through him.”
What would the Galaxy be without Cienfuegos?
“About a third as good,” defender Dan Calichman said. “Certainly, our record over the past when Cien doesn’t play is not a winning one. He’s the key to our team. He really is. We try to play to him and work through him offensively, and if we can’t get him the ball offensively, we don’t do as well, we don’t score.
“So if there’s a most important player on our team, then very obviously it’s Cien.”
Coach Octavio Zambrano does not want to contemplate a lineup without Cienfuegos.
“I think it’s difficult to imagine this team without Mauricio because from Day 1 he was such an important part of it,” he said. “I think Mauricio was able from the start to play the type of soccer that we envisioned he would play and thereby making it our style of soccer--which is playing short passes, movement with the ball on the ground and under control.
“He’s a player who has been able to put his imprint on our team and I think that he has also grown with our team. He has found things in his game that he needed to work on and he has done that during his tenure in the U.S.
“Every player grows, every coach grows. For sure, it’s no different with him. I don’t know if Mauricio has ever had as prolific a season as he’s had with this team as far as scoring. I don’t think scoring was ever his trademark. His game was always about setting other people up.”
And about enjoying himself.
“When you become a professional, you always have demands placed on you, you’re forced to [play only to] win,” Cienfuegos said. “There’s a lot of pressure put on you by fans and by team directors and administrators. A lot of times you succumb to the pressures from the outside, but you still try to have fun.
“That’s why I’ll always look back on my amateur career, when I was young, because I could play freely and without any type of pressure whatsoever.”
Cienfuegos was one of the first foreign stars signed by MLS.
“He has definitely been an instrumental part of the success, not only of the Galaxy but the league as well,” Commissioner Doug Logan said. “He has been a delightful young man to be around. He’s got an elfin, Pied Piper quality to him. He never gets too down. There’s always a little sparkle there that comes through.”
Cienfuegos’ contract expires after this season, but the league has a two-year option, which it will exercise.
“I’d like to play for a long time here in Los Angeles because I feel good and my family feels very comfortable here,” Cienfuegos said. “I think I’ve been able to fulfill the expectations of the fans and the expectations of the league, so I think I’d probably like to end my career here.”
TONIGHT
MLS PLAYOFFS
Western Conference Finals
GALAXY vs. CHICAGO
Where: Rose Bowl
Time: 7:30
