Before last year’s mayoral election, Rafael Gomes, a security guard at a Manhattan bank and amateur footballer, was driven to Coney Island’s “Soccer Fest” by teammates, crammed into a van. “I thought it’s just another fun tournament,” he tells this newspaper. After the game, he saw a man in a black suit, bearded and handsome, sprawled near a dugout. “Someone threw a ball at him, and he juggled it beautifully. Lovely touches, he might be a professional, I thought,” he says.
He asked who he was; friends said he was running for mayor. “I don’t listen to political stuff and all that. But I thought, wow, cool we are going to get a mayor who plays soccer,” he says. He watched the speech on television and became an instant admirer. “He said something like soccer is a big part of New Yorkers and a unifying force in the boroughs. I was moved because of all the talks of crackdown on immigrants and here is someone who talks of soccer and unity,” he says.
In a few weeks, Mamdani, born to Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, would assume office. Within a year he’d become a hero of the masses, not just for his politics, but for his love of a sport that bound the city together. “Soccer might not be the most popular sport in the US, but it’s the identity of immigrant communities in New York, especially in the Queens, where there are Hispanics, Caribbeans and Asians,” says Joseph Aguilero, of the Uruguay FC.