Brother’s Misfires Kept Castro on Goal : Soccer: While big brother Diego was making mistakes, Rod, now a Sockers’ rookie midfielder, was watching and learning.

Rod Castro’s older brother made all his mistakes for him.

If that sounds strange, you need only to know that Diego Castro, four years older than Rod, skipped college to play professional soccer. He says now that he has lost his love for the game.

Rod Castro, a rookie midfielder on the Sockers, went to college and then played two years in the American Indoor Soccer Assn. He is 24. His nine goals rank him second on the team behind Branko Segota (11). He is prepared for the Major Indoor Soccer League. And he is enjoying himself.

“It’s been great so far for me,” he says.

The pros were never great for Diego.

“I played my first professional game when I was 18,” says Diego, who had a nine-year professional career and played with the Chicago Sting and the Wichita Wings in the MISL. “It was tough being thrown into that world at a young age. I was just thrown into the dogs.

“I was there to mess up first. So he could see what I’d done. He could kind of learn from my mistakes.”

Rod Castro’s story begins in Chile, where he lived for the first six years of his life. Diego taught him the game. Rod wasn’t always a willing pupil. Sometimes Diego would beat him up until he would agree to play soccer with him.

“That was it, pretty much,” Diego says. “It wasn’t voluntary teaching on my part. I wanted to play the game and learn myself, and I kind of forced him and my other brother (Fernando) to get out and play with me.”

They would play on the narrow streets, using an old, beat-up soccer ball. Every time a car came through, the game was stopped. You scored a goal if you got the ball between two parked cars.

When Rod was 6 and Diego was 10, the Castros moved to England, where his mother, Carmen Silva, studied for her master’s degree in linguistics at the University of London. Rod and Diego played the same type of street soccer in England that they had in Chile.

It wasn’t until the Castros moved to the United States two years later that Rod got his first taste of organized soccer. At the age of 11, he began playing with a club and quickly established himself as better than most. By the time Rod graduated from Brentwood High School in Los Angeles, he had been team captain for three seasons and led the team in scoring for two. Socker Coach Ron Newman was making plans for him.

The Sockers offered to pay Castro’s education at San Diego State if he agreed to become a developmental player. He agreed. His mother didn’t.

“As soon as I signed,” Rod says, “I went back and called my mom, and she just freaked.”

For two reasons. First, Carmen saw what Diego had gone through, which was a load of frustration and injury and very little reward. But she also has this theory that a person should experience a lot before narrowing his or her interests.

“Signing a contract would have been specializing too soon,” says Carmen, now a linguistics professor at USC. “I don’t think early specializing is a good thing in any profession.

“The problem with Diego was that he didn’t know enough about what was possible with the NCAA. Oldest children in any family are guinea pigs in all senses. They tend not to believe their parents. The younger ones benefit from that.”

Diego and Carmen both talked Rod into choosing a college where he could play varsity soccer, where he could be a kid for a little bit longer.

He ended up at the University of Indiana, which won the national championship when he was a freshman in 1983. He was team captain as a senior. By the time he graduated, he had learned to put up with a lot, including being told what to do.

“If you say ‘No,’ ” he says, “you lose your scholarship and you’re out of school.”

The Sockers were still interested and drafted him in 1987. Problem was, Newman didn’t have a spot for him. Too many stars. Rather than play on the developmental team, Castro opted to sign with the Memphis Storm of the AISA, where he felt he would have a chance to polish his skills.

Diego was Rod’s teammate in Memphis, and that was something to behold. Close as they are, they fight a lot. Even on the field.

“We would just virtually let the game go on behind us and have these enormous fights,” Diego says. “Almost fist fights.”

It is habit for the Castro family to argue. Carmen admits as much. The Castros are strong-willed. But the arguments are forgotten quickly, and it is apparent that this family benefits from each other’s opinions.

If Diego has the opportunity to see Rod play, Rod will call him the next morning and say “Give me some pointers.” And Carmen says that when she sees Rod play, she is very critical. Diego’s and Carmen’s expectations are high.

“It was tough (in Memphis) at first, because I wanted him to do real well, and I was real demanding,” Diego says. “We used to fight all the time. It was terrible, but it’s not something we haven’t done all our lives.”

Things worked out. Rod wound up leading the Storm in scoring last season, with 55 goals and 19 assists in 39 games. And he and Diego finally stopped arguing.

“Eventually,” Diego says, “I think one of the best parts of my entire nine years of soccer was getting to play with him.”

Comparisons?

“We’re different players,” Rod says. “He’s more of a player who’s very, very skillful. I’m a player who will get in there and whack somebody as hard as they whack me.”

That is serving him nicely in the MISL. Castro is now ready for the big leagues. He hasn’t cowered his way through his first 14 games. The confidence built through his college and AISA days is evident.

“I think he has the potential to be one of the mainstays in the future here,” defender Kevin Crow says. “He has the skills, he’s enthusiastic, and he trains hard.”

Says Newman: “I think he’ll be a star. Rod is a very unique player. He has a wide stance and a low center of gravity, almost a Tatu type of stance. He can only improve.”

Castro is ready for this attention. He would be the first to tell you that he was in awe of players such as Segota and Steve Zungul when he was drafted by the Sockers. But his awe has turned into respect for their accomplishments. And a desire to sponge up every bit of soccer knowledge he can.

“I think that was my problem two years ago,” he says. “I was in awe of them too much. I didn’t have the confidence to play with them. If you’re in awe of somebody, you’re a little bit in fear of them. Now I know I can play with them.”

Even now that he has made it to the MISL, Castro is still learning the value of patience. When he first started scoring a lot of goals, he worried that he wasn’t getting assists. You would talk to him before a game, and he would say something like: “Tonight I’m just going to concentrate on getting an assist.” And it wouldn’t happen.

Now, his thinking has changed.

“I may have put that in my mind too much,” he says. “I may have subconsciously lowered my game a little bit.”

The less-serious side of Castro has noticed a subtle difference between the AISA and the MISL. The size of the championship rings.

“The two rings I’ve got are a lot smaller than they get here,” he says. “I want to get a nice big one.”

It isn’t as if he has been impatient.