Bond between Bedoya, Fabian has transcended rivalry
CHESTER >> Practice had ended on the Friday before the Philadelphia Union were to take on Orlando City. As starters trickled off the field, Alejandro Bedoya and Marco Fabian were among the stragglers.
Instead of making a bee line for the locker room in the stifling July heat, Bedoya stood with a clutch of soccer balls at his feet. Fabian, with teenage midfielders Anthony Fontana and Brendan Aaronson, lined up on the edge of the box, practicing leaping headers at Bedoya’s lofted crosses. The drill was jocular and informal, with the occasional trickshot attempt and plenty of veteran joshing, mostly Bedoya needling the gulf in Fabian’s vertical leap and Cristiano Ronaldo’s iconic aerial ability.
Two days later, when Fabian nodded in a header for the first goal of a 2-2 draw, Bedoya was the first player Fabian hugged.
The relationship between Bedoya and Fabian has informed the lockerroom chemistry coach Jim Curtin has lauded, a trait that informs the Union’s summer in first place in the Eastern Conference. Outwardly, the fast bond formed across the U.S.Mexico divide might seem surprising. But that surface detail belies a deep relationship between sagacious veterans that has provided a central axis on and off the field.
“Soccer is one language,” Fabian said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, and I know I’m Mexican and Ale is from here and has family from Colombia, but we try to include everybody.”
The two have never matched up on the international stage, despite 108 combined caps and three World Cup appearances. (They’ve been in the squad for the same game on several occasions, but never played in the same game.) They share an agent but had only met in passing or via mutual friends — American defender and Fabian’s Eintract Frankfurt teammate Timothy Chandler, for instance — before Fabian signed in February.
Bedoya was central to Fabian settling in in Philadelphia, with Curtin rooming them together in preseason. From there, the similarities blossomed.
“When I came to Philly, he was the first guy that I met, my first or second day,” Fabian said. “We went to his home. … I felt really, really at home because of him. He’s an amazing person, and he tried to introduce me to everyone in Philadelphia.”
Both are Spanish speakers, Bedoya immensely proud of his Colombian heritage. They have an overlapping range of interests, including the NBA, fashion and art.
In a short time, they’ve produced plenty of memorable Instagram content, from riding bikes on the Venice boardwalk before a game with the Galaxy to dinners at Bedoya’s home to off-day trips to New York with teammates. They’ve conspired on goal celebrations, like Bedoya’s homerun swing against Dallas and Bedoya serving as the basket for a dunking Fabian in Cincinnati. As Fabian struggled through an ankle injury that cost him eight games, Bedoya helped him manage and, when needed, provided the tough talk to stoke his competitive fire.
After most training sessions, you’ll likely find the vets working alongside Aaronson and Fontana. Though more than a decade and millions in career earnings separate them, it can be hard to tell at first glance which players are in their early 30s and which are exuberant youngsters. More than anything, it’s clear that Fabian and Bedoya, even on the practice field, just have fun together.
“We know when we can separate it, when it’s work and when we can have fun,” Fabian said. “When it’s work, it’s work. We act seriously, we try to put it all together, we work 100 percent every day. But when we can enjoy it and kid around, we do it like this.”
For fans whose only experience of Fabian is through the “dos a cero” lens of U.S.-Mexico, that might seem odd. But the players’ animosity ends at the lines. (Fabian’s introduction to MLS, you’ll recall, was a tiff in the opener against Toronto with American captain Michael Bradley.)
But Bedoya and Fabian separate the spheres. The rivalry stokes passion on the field. But the current political moment, which Bedoya inserted himself to this week in viral fashion, shows the dire consequences of overboard tribalism. The vitriol is useful, but only when circumscribed to the field.
“Soccer is a great way to bring people together,” Bedoya said. “You need these rivalries and there are things that are ingrained in fan bases — hate is a strong word, obviously, but there are some fans that take it to another level. But I think it’s never like that amongst players. … Soccer has the ability to unite all that and get rid of those kind of stereotypes and build bridges rather than having people hate each other for no reason.”
Bedoya needs no instruction on that point: He played for Glasgow Rangers in Scotland, half of the Old Firm Derby with Celtic, a divide that crosses political and religious lines with occasionally deadly ramifications. He’s played with guys on opposite sides of wars in the Balkans who nonetheless became teammates. With Bedoya’s worldview so globally expanded, the biggest rivalry in CONCACAF pales.
Fabian and Bedoya are also bonded by their journeys as professionals. Both traveled overseas to chase their dreams — Bedoya to Sweden out of college, with stops in France and Scotland; Fabian to Germany after a decade with Chivas Guadalajara — a challenge that unites them.
“I think once you go out of your comfort zone and you step outside of these boundaries, you go to Europe and you see all these different cultures, you travel and become close to a lot of other guys,” Bedoya said. “… For me and Marco, going to Europe, leaving our comfort zones, having the cultures and all these different foods and the travel, that matured me a lot more as a person very quickly. And I think Marco has the same, talking to him about our personal experiences on and off the field.”
None of that nuance is possible if you stop at the nationality column. And as much as both value the national rivalry, those labels don’t make them sworn enemies.
“That’s what makes soccer such a beautiful sport, the derbies, the rivalries,” Bedoya said. “But when you get off the field, we’re human beings first and now that we’re teammates … it’s just a different dynamic off the field. We respect each other. We’re really close here. …
“I think it’s nice that the fans have that rivalry to feed off of it, but you hate when it goes over the top, because it never is to that extent. Obviously on the field, you want to kick each other’s butts because it’s a competitive game, and they’re our biggest rival, but it’s sometimes tough to have those nuanced conversations because it can be just as easy as, ‘oh we’re supposed to hate these guys because of this and that,’ and sometimes it gets political and all this crap. But once you take that out of the equation, we’re just two cool guys that like similar things.”