Myers Helps Take Galaxy to Right Side of the Tracks
If the men who built the railroad from Puerto Limon to San Jose, Costa Rica, in the 1940s had lived up to their promise, chances are Roy Myers would not be playing for the Galaxy this weekend.
In fact, he probably would not even exist.
But those men went back on their word. They brought in workmen from the Caribbean to hack a path through the tree-clad mountains and to lay the railroad track. Then, the organizers simply abandoned the workers.
Myers’ grandfather was one of those laborers.
Unable to return to his native Jamaica, he stayed in Puerto Limon, raised a family and, on April 13, 1969, found himself with a new grandson, Roy, who in years to come would blossom into one of Costa Rica’s finest soccer players.
Sunday afternoon at the Cotton Bowl, Myers will be a key component for a Galaxy team that needs a victory over the Dallas Burn to win a place in Major League Soccer’s championship game.
All of which is jumping far ahead of the story.
To Myers, home these days is Glendale, where he lives with his wife and children. But his real home is a modest hillside hamlet named La Francia, not far from Puerto Limon and half an hour’s drive from the Caribbean coast.
“It’s a little town, maybe 600 people,” the 30-year-old midfielder said. “There’s nothing there, but I love to be there. It has a field, a school, a bar. . . .”
It was the field that changed Myers’ life.
“All we did there,” he said, “was play soccer.”
And it was there, 14 years ago, that a coach named Alvaro MacDonald spotted the lanky teenager with the silky talent of a natural soccer player. For Myers, those skills offered a route from poverty and away from the wood-slat home in which his family lived.
“My old house was like a lantern, you could see right through it,” he said. “We were very poor.”
Myers’ father, Gilberto, was not a soccer player. Instead, he loved the sea. He would leave La Francia daily and head for the coast, going out on a boat or fishing from the shore.
One day last January, he didn’t return.
“He would love to fish,” Myers said. “Every day. . . . On Jan. 2, everyone was at home and still he wanted to go fishing. And he drowned. He fell and hit his head.
“I don’t like [to fish]. I’m afraid of the sea. He could have lived without that, but he just loved it.”
The tragedy lay far in the future when MacDonald saw Myers playing pick-up games in La Francia in the early 1980s and recognized his potential to play professionally in the Costa Rican league.
“He said he could change the way I was living.” Myers said. “He took me to Deportiva Limonense. I was 16. The next year I was playing for the team.”
Costa Rica has a handful of top clubs, but Deportiva Limonense is not one of them.
“Sometimes they paid you, sometimes not,” Myers said. “We used to practice in the mud.”
Still, playing in the first division brought him to the attention of the national team. Before long, he was playing for Costa Rica as it tried to qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
Then fate again intervened, this time in the form of another coach, Bora Milutinovic.
Milutinovic became Costa Rica’s coach after it had qualified for the World Cup. Once in Italy, he produced one of soccer’s major surprises, leading the small Central American nation to upset victories over Sweden and Scotland and into the second round.
The players, Myers included, became national heroes.
“The World Cup changed my life,” Myers said. “When I got back to my town, all 600 people were there waiting for me. The national anthem was playing. It was amazing. I was crying.
“The government gave me a new car. It gave me money, so I could make my [mother’s] house better. People recognized me and gave me everything free.
“I never took advantage of that. It changed a lot.”
Barely 20, Myers’ career took off. He went to Montevideo to play for Penarol, one of Uruguay’s most famous teams. Then he moved back to Costa Rica with perennial champion Saprissa. He also played for Pachuca in Mexico and Tolima in Colombia between stints with Saprissa.
All the while, he stayed on the national team, for which he has now played 40 games and won three Central American titles. In addition, he has won four national and three CONCACAF club championships with Saprissa.
For 10 years, though, he yearned to play in the United States, since a first visit here with Costa Rica’s national team in 1989. Finally, this spring he got his chance.
Milutinovic was coach of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars and persuaded MLS that Myers would be a good acquisition for the league. He has been, but not at the Meadowlands.
In seven games for the MetroStars, he managed only one assist. Because of the team’s lack of forwards, Myers was asked to play up front, as a goal scorer. His real talent is in the midfield, where his dribbling skill, vision and ability to read the game allow him to dismantle opposing defenses.
“I’m not a striker,” he said. “To be a forward you have to be a little stronger, a little bigger. From midfield, I can see everyone. In New York, I never got the ball. That made it worse.”
On June 1, the MetroStars traded Myers to the Galaxy for Brazilian forward Welton. Myers hasn’t looked back.
He has played in 19 games for the Galaxy, scoring four goals and assisting on six others. Two of the goals and three of the assists were game-winners.
He easily moved into the starting lineup of a team that he believes is technically skilled and tactically intelligent. The same could be said of his own play.
After the Galaxy won Game 1 of the best-of-three Western Conference finals, 2-1, at the Rose Bowl on Sunday, Dallas Coach Dave Dir singled out the Costa Rican’s play.
“Myers was on fire in the first half,” Dir said. “I thought he was incredible tonight.”
Countered Myers: “To me, I didn’t play a good game. I hope I can play better this Sunday. But if he said that, I’m glad.”
Game 2 will not be easy, Myers said, pounding his right fist into his left palm to emphasize the Burn players’ relentless physical pressure.
“They never give up,” he said. “They’re always running, running, running, to the end of the game, so it’s hard.”
But the Galaxy, which reached the MLS championship game in 1996 only to fall to Washington D.C. United, is a confident team right now.
“The feeling among the players is that this year we can make it,” Myers said. “They feel this is a better team [than the 1996 version].
“I know that in L.A. they haven’t won anything for 10 years in any sport, so I hope we can do something about that.”
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Roy Myers
by the Numbers
MLS statistics for Galaxy’s Roy Myers:
Regular Season Games 26
Games Started 23
Minutes 1970
Goals 4
Assists 7
Playoff Games 3
Games Started 3
Minutes 233
Goals 0
Assists 1
