Latino Golazo : What U.S. Soccer Teaches Us About America’s Drive for Excellence
Tonight in Seattle, the United States Men's National Team faces Belgium with a chance to reach its first World Cup quarterfinal since 2002. For many of us who have been watching the entire World Cup, this team has already inspired joy and a further love of the game.
And one reason is how this team has pulled together. In that sense, it is a microcosm of America, and of how Latinos embody that American experience.
Start with the coach. Mauricio Pochettino grew up in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, the son of farmworkers in a town where soccer was religion. He arrived in this country with years of experience in high-profile leagues of Latin America and Europe.
With an outsider’s eye, he set out to study American culture to find the common thread that runs through all his players. He learned what makes this team American, even as he coached in Spanish, hugged his players like an Argentine, and carried his mate to training. That dual fluency built trust. It brought a locker room of wildly different backgrounds together and convinced them to believe in something larger than any individual career.
Taken together, that is the quintessential American lesson.
Now look at the players. Alejandro Zendejas was originally left off the March roster. He responded by working harder and making it back on the team. Ricardo Pepi, originally from El Paso, worked his way from the Texas border to the top of European soccer one goal at a time. Cristian Roldan, raised by Salvadoran and Guatemalan parents, spent his entire career in MLS while teammates chased bigger names abroad. He kept showing up. Gio Reyna, whose father captained this same national team, fought through injuries and public doubt to reclaim his place.
Among all the talented players who make up the USA team, Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, and Weston McKennie, not one of these men was handed anything. Every spot on this roster was earned through work, rejection, and more work. It is the story we tell at our own dinner tables. If you work hard, you can achieve.
It should be the same for those of us who work in the health sector, not just in sports or entertainment. Latinos are the youngest, fastest-growing population in the United States. Yet Latino researchers remain minimal in the institutions that decide what gets studied, funded, and published. Latino patients remain underrepresented in the clinical trials that shape the medicine they will one day receive. The talent and work ethic exist. What has been missing is the roster spot.
Pochettino selected Zendejas because the performance demanded it. That is all Latino physicians, scientists, and community health leaders are asking for: judge the work, open the trial, fund the study, and put us on the field to watch what happens.
Tonight, soccer is setting a standard. A team led by an Argentine coach and powered by American-born players, some of them the sons of immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. All of them carrying the hopes of the entire country. Nobody watching in Seattle will ask where those players' parents were born. They will ask only one question: Can he score?
Health research should work the same way. When it finally does, the whole country wins. That is the real goooooool!