MLS’s most successful foreign player settles comfortably in capital
Just moments after D.C. United opened its 2000 campaign with an embarrassing 4-0 home loss to Los Angeles, Marco Etcheverry answered a barrage of questions about his regrettable debut, which ended with a red card just seven minutes after it began.
Many players would have taken advantage of their early shower and dodged the media entirely, but even more noteworthy in Etcheverry’s case was that he handled every question in the language it was asked – Spanish or English.
Teammates have often noted Etcheverry’s ability to comprehend English, but until late last season, he spoke almost exclusively in Spanish and used translators during interviews.
This time he demonstrated his increasing commitment to using the second language he has been learning gradually since 1996.
Bringing down the language barrier is the latest in a series of signals that the Bolivian playmaker intends to stay in the United States for a long time.
“We had translators, so we didn’t need to speak very much English,” Etcheverry said. “I don’t talk very good English, but I try. I want to learn more every day.”
Unlike some foreign players who have joined MLS as a career stopover and a chance to sample American life, Etcheverry sees the United States as a place where he can raise his children the way he wants and leave an impression on the young soccer landscape.
Etcheverry saw the United States for the first time in 1987 when his youth team from the Tahuichi Academy came to play in the Dallas Cup and won the prestigious tournament.
“At that time I saw it is a big country, the No. 1 country in a lot of ways, plenty of facilities – why no soccer?” Etcheverry said. “The kids love soccer, why no league? The No. 1 country for kids playing soccer is the USA – not Italy, not England, not South America. That was my first time thinking, why is there no league here?”
Etcheverry’s interest in American soccer was piqued again in 1994 when he came to play in the World Cup with Bolivia.
“I saw the stadiums, they are full for every game and I say ‘this is unbelievable’ and so when the league came to Chile to ask me if I want to play in the United States, I said, ‘of course.’ … I think everyone in the world is waiting to see what’s happening here,” Etcheverry said. “That’s why I am excited.”
El Diablo plays the Maestro
During the inaugural 1996 season, Etcheverry told Bienvenido Martinez about his dream of starting a soccer school in the United States, but no actual groundwork was laid until after the 1997 season.
Etcheverry spent eight years of his childhood at Tahuichi, the Santa Cruz, Bolivia soccer school that was also attended by D.C. United teammate Jaime Moreno and New England’s Mauricio Ramos. Etcheverry wanted to share some of the training philosophy that helped shape him as a player and a young man.
According to the Washington Business Journal, he invested $150,000 to launch the Marco Antonio Etcheverrry Soccer Academy, which completed its first year of operation in 1999.
“When he told me, ‘I want to do this,’ I knew he was serious and that he wanted to stay here [in the United States],” said Martinez, now senior vice president of the academy.
About 200 Washington area youths, ages 5-17, paid tuition to join the seven-month program, which generally holds after-school sessions three times a week at three different locations.
“People think it is just a copycat of Tahuichi, but it is not,” Martinez said. “We have to do things differently here because it is a totally different environment.”
Etcheverry’s playing commitments do not allow him to be a full-time coach, but he often visits to add insights.
“Marco has a great charisma with kids,” Martinez said. “He can work with all ages.”
Former United assistant coach Dave Sarachan said Etcheverry was the first one to sign up for a USSF “B” coaching license course offered to the team last year.
“Normally what happens with a player, is when they finish their career, they begin to try and get the license and it takes a lot of time,” Etcheverry said. “I would like to coach, but not now. I am still learning from every coach I have.”
Son makes the call
The mid-sized luxury home in Herndon, Va., that Etcheverry purchased in 1997 has all the typical amenities of American upper-middle class suburbia: hardwood floors, a projector-screen TV and pool table downstairs, a computer and video-game room for the children and a backyard pool with hot tub under construction.
The stereo has a karaoke function and Etcheverry enjoys soft-rock ballads as much as salsa music, but he hasn’t picked up on some other American pastimes, like golf, that captivate Moreno.
“Marco is a very proud man and everything he does, he wants to do it right,” said Sarachan. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t really taken to golf, because he can see he doesn’t have enough time to be really good at it.”
Etcheverry’s activities away from the field include watching videotapes of games, reading about soccer, sampling fine restaurants and spending time with his family.
His professional career took him from Bolivia to Spain (1991-92 with Albacete), Chile (1993-94 with Colo Colo) and Colombia (1994-95 with America Cali), and looking at his family’s life during those years helped him decide that the United States would be his last stop.
“When I went with my family to the shopping mall in Chile, my wife is walking alone because I am signing autographs for like half an hour,” Etcheverry said. “She is saying to me ‘let’s go, we have to go,’ and more people are coming.”
Now, however, Etcheverry enjoys some degree of anonymity.
Etcheverry said he is only a few months away from obtaining his green card, which would allow him to become a permanent resident here, but he has no intentions of becoming a U.S. citizen.
“My heart is in my country,” Etcheverry said. “People were talking in Bolivia like, ‘Etcheverry is changing his nationality,’ but that is not true. I am getting my green card, but I love my country and I am working in soccer here – that is my thinking. … I can help soccer a lot here.”
When rumors of interest from overseas clubs, particularly in France, reached their peak in 1997, Etcheverry asked his son Michael, now 10, what he would think of moving to France. Michael told his father that he would not have any friends in France.
“I don’t want to make more change for my family,” Etcheverry said. “I love soccer, but I love more my kids. It is very difficult for them to be always moving. … I’m very, very happy because my family is comfortable here, my kids are doing well in the schools and we have a lot of time to spend together.”
by Soccer America associate editor Will Kuhns