Score!!!

Since Lopez entered a team in the papy league in the early '90s, only one team has consistently challenged Farolito. Tony Ramirez is the teddy-bear-like owner of one-man San Bruno shop Victory Soccer, which serves as a pit stop for papy league patrons who stop by to watch televised games on Friday evenings. Ramirez says he mailed his top Victory players $70 to $100 when he could, in addition to all the soccer gear they wanted. Victory and Farolito traded championships, and a rivalry formed. "[Tony] and Salvador always had their polemics," says Pecas, Farolito's manager.

Players describe the two coaches as polar opposites. Lopez is the shrewd analyzer; Ramirez is the laid-back supporter. For Lopez, discipline is first, and if someone doesn't play how he wants, "I'll put another in." Ramirez gives his players more leash. Ramirez recounts with relish the time one of Farolito's players spit on him, and Ramirez got so angry, the ref threw him out. He still isn't speaking to Jorge Chavez, the coach of Farolito's younger team, for stealing away one player who'd committed to Victory before the season started. Ramirez likes to refer to Lopez' players and assistants as "ass kissers."

"He still has a lot of guys around him ... like kissing him. Moomoomoomoo," Ramirez says. "When I had a team, I had to carry everything. If a ball goes out of bounds, I have to watch for the ball, otherwise it gets lost. Salvador doesn't have to do that. He's just standing there."

But with the slow economy, Ramirez couldn't afford to keep paying players, or close his shop on Saturdays to head to the field. So he decided to fold his team after the 2006 season. For the championship that year, Farolito and Victory faced off one last time at Boxer Stadium. With the teams tied, as usual, at full time, the game went to a penalty shootout, each team nailing all five. Finally, in sudden-death penalty kicks, Farolito's Salazar missed. "He put his head down, and we all ran around the field," Ramirez remembers. The following year, Victory's players fanned out to other teams — many to, yes, Farolito.

Other help for the Farolito empire comes direct from Mexico, with Lopez serving as a portal to the United States for past Gallos players. When 36-year-old Argentine forward Luciano Guiñazu hung up his cleats three years ago, his wife suggested they move to the States rather than return to the tough economy of Buenos Aires. Guiñazu called the only person he knew here: Lopez. Now Guiñazu plays papy soccer on Saturdays and works at Lopez' taquerias until 3 a.m. four nights a week — taking orders, distributing paychecks — in the first nonsoccer job of his life, alongside three other former Gallos. "You miss it sometimes, being on the field, competing for something," he says. "But my moment passed. I took it well."

Guiñazu even shaved off his signature long locks this year after they started thinning — a moment of reckoning with age if ever there was one. But he still works on the playing field, this time as a teacher. Finding that one minimum-wage job won't support a family in the Bay Area, he supplements his income by coaching at the Burlingame Soccer Club, where he awes the kids with his expert ball control and Argentine accent.

Lopez shakes off the notion that he likes to help immigrants who have come after him. More than anything, he is a businessman at heart — a stickler for hard work who says his taqueria's quality is only "70 or 80 percent" of where he wants it, and who will still man the grill for a new location when it first opens.

"The hustle, hustle comes in our blood," Guadalupe says, adding that her family is now thoroughly acculturated. "We could buy ourselves a Lamborghini and live in Hillsborough if we want to. ... There's no way we could survive in Mexico now."

Still, Mexico is everywhere in the taqueria. A picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe stands vigil over the kitchen. Songs by Los Tigres del Norte and Vicente Fernández rotate on the jukebox. Advertised on the restaurant wall is another Mexican tradition: a soccer lottery, or quiniela. To play, you predict the outcomes of the weekend's Mexican pro league games and enter the raffle for $10. Supposedly, the one who guesses the most correct results wins the money; if there's a tie, the pot is split, and the number of winners is scribbled on a piece of cardboard placed over the next-door bar.

At the risk of spoiling the fun, hosting or housing a sports lottery is illegal in California, with a penalty of up to a $5,000 fine and/or a year in jail in addition to anything from a letter of warning to a revocation of a liquor license. One former quiniela winner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a taqueria employee delivered $3,500 in well-worn $5, $10, and $20 bills in rubber-banded stacks to his home last year.