Aventura soccer fans have packed restaurants like La Estancia Argentina to watch the FIFA World Cup. For some, watching the games just wets their appetite to get on a field and start kicking a ball themselves.
That’s not always an easy proposition for those that have to balance jobs and family; but such commitments didn’t stop Walter Hernandez, 27, of Aventura, a car wash owner and father, from playing a pick-up game last Monday evening at the Aventura Indoor Soccer Club on 2650 NE 189 St.
“Now with the World Cup, I’m excited because people come out who haven’t played before,” he said in his native Honduran Spanish. “It’s playing the game that you really get to enjoy it, it’s the best.”
The club — really a warehouse converted into two indoor soccer fields — was full last Monday with two five on five games occurring simultaneously, while the teams next in line waited their turn behind the Plexiglas barriers. The language of choice was Spanish, though English and Portuguese could be heard as well.
The club was started three years ago by Adrian Gleizer, 36, an Argentine real estate broker who lives in Sunny Isles. He is passionate about the beautiful game, or as he calls it, fútbol.
“I was born in Argentina, we breath fútbol, fútbol is our religion,” he said.
He started the club because there was a lack of indoor faculties near Aventura where adults could play at night. It has grown since its founding, and Gleizer and several of the players said that World Cup has pushed up attendance in the last few weeks.
Women play as well – while Walter Hernandez waited his turn, Geovana Heck, 38, was running up and down the artificial turf. Heck is Brazilian and owns an insurance business in Avenutra. Like most people in the club, she found out about it through friends.
“I love it, it’s the best exercise I can do – I play three, four days a week,” she said
The talk between games was, as expected, all about the latest developments at the World Cup. “Did you see that game”, “ What about THAT goal!” the back-and-forth went. For Gleizer, the conversations are part of the point.
“More than anything, this is a club to play soccer, make friends, and enjoy it,” he said.
cross posted on our miami herald aventura channel
by: Jared Goyette
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