Alianza gives young Latino soccer players a platform — and a chance
Sofia Alcaraz has waged a lonely, years-long campaign to get the Tijuana Xolos to notice her son Ricardo Villalba, a talented 17-year-old goalkeeper who plays high school soccer just six miles from the border.
“They said, ‘You’re very good. We’ll call you.’ But they never do,” Alcaraz said of her dealings with the Mexican league team.
So she couldn’t hide a feeling of vindication when Xolos scout Jaime Vargas approached Villalba and asked for his phone number following a showcase last month at the San Bernardino Soccer Complex, tucked against the 210 Freeway in the shadow of the San Bernardino Mountains.
“We’ll be in contact,” Vargas promised in Spanish. “We’re going to send an invitation for a tryout.”
Yet despite Villalba’s obvious talent, the breakthrough probably had less to do with the young keeper’s play then it did with the showcase in which he was playing. Over the past nine years Alianza de Futbol Hispano has staged annual tryouts and youth tournaments in a dozen U.S. cities, drawing more than 80,000 players – and dozens of scouts from all over the Americas.
More than 60 players have signed professional contracts after being discovered at an Alianza showcase, most with teams in Mexico’s Liga MX. Last year alone 33 of Alianza’s national finalists fielded a combined 116 invitations from 14 Liga MX teams.
And more than 25 players have been recruited for age-group national teams in the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, making Alianza one of the largest and most successful soccer scouting programs in the region.
“For us it’s fundamental and important,” said Aldo Rivas, a scout with Mexico’s Chivas of Guadalajara, which has signed a half-dozen Alianza players. “There’s always a player who has the opportunity to progress with us. Every day it grows. And each time there’s more support for it.”
The two-day San Bernardino event, held on a sweltering weekend on the sprawling complex’s 17 fields, featured 140 teams and more than 2,500 participants in boys’ and girls’ tournaments, with the players ranging in age from 7 to over 21. The showcase portion of the event, which drew seven scouts from three countries, was limited to male players in the U-16, U-19 and U-22 age groups.
Organizers say the best players in each of the three age groups will be flown to Miami next month for a three-day tryout in front of representatives from more than 30 teams in Major League Soccer, Liga MX, the Mexican soccer federations and several college programs.
The program is open to all players, but Alianza – founded by sports marketers Richard Copeland and Brad Rothenberg -- doesn’t apologize for focusing on Latinos who, the group says, are underrepresented in programs sponsored by the U.S. Soccer Federation and other mainstream groups.
“There’s more than 4 million players registered in U.S. Soccer. But there are many, many more who are not registered. And many of them are Hispanic,” Alianza’s Rafa Calderon said.
“This program – not only [the tryouts] – gives the opportunity to them to compete. They get the experience. They get involved in real soccer.”
It’s the tryouts that draw the scouts though. And Alianza’s focus on Latino players helps there as well -- especially for Mexican league teams, which face limits to the number of foreign-born players they can use. However, if a U.S.-born player with Mexican roots registers with the Mexican federation before they turn 19, the Liga MX considers them domestic players.
Alianza helps teams find those players.
Sacha van der Most is chasing the same demographic. A decade ago he helped build the Chivas USA youth program into an MLS powerhouse by pioneering the idea of scouting Southern California for Mexican American talent. Following the demise of Chivas USA, he’s begun working for the Mexican soccer federation, which, acting on Van der Most’s reports, last week plucked 14-year-old Efrain Alvarez out of the Galaxy academy and invited him to Mexico City to take part in a U-15 national team training camp.
“What is unique is they’re doing it all over the country,” Van der Most said of Alianza’s success at finding top Latino players. “I’m the only [age-group] scout for Mexico in the U.S. It’s very difficult to do that by yourself because it’s a huge country. It really helps if you have an organization like this do the pre-screening.”
But if Alianza has been a help for Van der Most, it represents something much bigger for Alexis Garcia, a baby-faced high school sophomore who grew up playing on the dusty fields of the 47-acre San Bernardino Soccer Complex and now harbors dreams of playing professionally.
“If I wouldn’t have been here, I wouldn’t have been found,” said Garcia, a defender and one of three players from the Southern California showcase invited to Miami. “It’s one more step ahead toward a dream I really want.”
Twitter: @kbaxter11
