You can make it all about David Beckham if that’s the extent of what you know about soccer.
You can flaunt your ignorance with a lot of lame “bend it” jokes and unfunny Posh Spice puns if it helps you to get pumped up for Sunday’s match at a sold-out Toyota Park between the L.A. Galaxy (with or without Beckham) and the Fire.
Or you could get to know the other star of this show.
You could go to YouTube and watch Temo dance.
You could look at a “101 Most Influential Latino Athletes in America” list that ESPN’s Deportes La Revista came up with and find Temo’s name in the No. 1 spot, ahead of Alex Rodriguez, Oscar De La Hoya, Manu Ginobili and David Ortiz.
You could point to a 42 percent spike in the Fire’s home attendance since Temo became a part of the team.
You could be suitably impressed that a Chicago team mired in last place when Temo got here could make the MLS playoffs by winning this game.
His name is Cuauhtemoc (“kwa-ta-mock”) Blanco and he is everything he was cracked up to be.
Flamboyant. Flashy. Funny. Intense. Unpredictable. Mercurial. Loved all over the league. Hated all over the league.
On his own team, younger guys never know what to expect from the 34-year-old Blanco. They have seen him seize a microphone on a team bus to entertain them. They have seen him take a female passenger by the arm in an airport terminal and dance with her.
“No one else on the team has a personality like his,” midfielder Brian Plotkin says. “He is very comical.”
And that’s even though he doesn’t speak English and some of his teammates don’t speak Spanish.
“He’s able to communicate non-verbally,” captain Chris Armas says. “There hasn’t been any language barrier. Some of the guys have even talked about taking Spanish classes.”
If you don’t understand how gigantic the 5-foot-8-inch Blanco is in Mexico, then it could be you don’t speak Spanish yourself.
So you probably weren’t there at 26th and Albany in the Little Village neighborhood last month when Blanco was the grand marshal of the Mexican Independence Day Parade.
You probably didn’t catch Beckham’s own “Soccer USA” television show, which sent a crew to follow Blanco from start to finish at the parade.
You probably missed ESPN2’s coverage of a Fire game with FC Dallas, when a special “Blanco Cam” was used for one purpose: to follow Temo’s every move on the field.
You probably didn’t go to California for the Fire’s game with Chivas USA, which the home team promoted by plastering Blanco’s face on a “Wanted” poster.
You probably weren’t there when Blanco arrived at the L.A. airport, where so many flag-waving fans mobbed him that some of them stood on the baggage carousel.
You probably didn’t see that Chivas game, where fans in a standing-room-only crowd of 27,000 at the Home Depot Center threw objects at Blanco that just missed his face after he complained about a referee’s call.
You probably didn’t see his guest shot on “Bailando por Un Sueno” (a.k.a., “Dancing for a Dream”), the smash-hit Univision reality show that among Mexican-American viewers often tops CBS and NBC shows in the ratings on Sunday nights.
Want to watch Blanco twirl his partner across a dance floor, ending with a flourish — his signature Aztec warrior pose in which he celebrates a goal by dropping to a knee and pretending to shoot an arrow?
Go ahead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =wZnb5gNML9U
A diva? No.
“He isn’t high-maintenance by any means,” says Ron Stern, the Fire’s director of operations. “He is one of the guys. The only thing he has asked for is a window seat on the plane.”
For years, the Fire has not been a hot and sexy sell. Thanks to the player with the league’s second-highest paycheck, the Fire is now MLS’ second-best draw on the road, behind only L.A. and the bend-it dude.
Blanco’s fame is widespread, at least with a Spanish-speaking public (and a soccer-conscious one).
A magazine writer recently told Daniel Jankowski, the Fire’s director of media relations: “I’ve just interviewed the Michael Jordan of Mexico.”
On the field, the Fire has lost only two of 12 matches since Blanco suited up.
“He has definitely made a difference,” Plotkin says. “He has been everything we hoped he would be.”
He is why sales of Fire merchandise are up 28 percent from a year ago. He is why tickets at the 20,000-seat Toyota Park in Bridgeview have become hard to get.
Soccer’s non-fans have had this date circled on their calendars for months now, this being the day Beckham is supposed to be here.
Chicago’s true soccer fans have had signs and cheers ready for months now, in English and in Spanish too:
“David Who?”
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mikedowney@tribune.com
