Sporting Kansas City’s Roger Espinoza is the epitome of the American Dream

An 85-year-old stadium sits in the hub of Puerto Cortes, Honduras, a city along the Caribbean coast in the northwest quadrant of the country. The 7,900-seat structure serves as the connecting point for several neighborhoods in the city, and the field, composed of a grass, dirt and sand mixture, is the championship site for their rival soccer matches.

Roger Espinoza was 5 years old when he played his first game inside the tall, wire-fenced walls. It was his home stadium for six years, a tenure that produced legendary tales in the Sporting Kansas City midfielder’s native country.

“I would have people come up to me when he was 7 or 8 and tell me he was going to be a professional. They already knew,” says Herson Espinoza, Roger’s older brother.

“But they never said Kansas (City).”

One afternoon last week, nearly 18 years after he last played a soccer game in Puerto Cortes, Espinoza reconstructed the path that led him from the dirt and sand fields of Honduras to internationally-renowned Sporting Park in Kansas City.

It followed a natural progression, he explained. Youth academies. Junior college. Ohio State. The Kansas City Wizards. A World Cup. The English Premier League. And, finally, back to Kansas City. It all fits neatly into a sequence, he says.

But it wasn’t quite that convenient. It rarely is, of course.

A violent gang culture, centered around cocaine trafficking, began to spread across the Honduran neighborhoods bordering Puerto Cortes two decades ago, and Espinoza’s parents moved the family to Denver to escape it. His father told him it was a chance to live the American Dream.

But a prominent figure in the Honduran soccer community warned him it was the end of his dream to play European soccer.

“A guy told my mom that if I moved to the United States, I would never play soccer again,” Espinoza said. “He said nobody there likes soccer.”

Espinoza took a six-month hiatus from the sport after moving to Denver. And not by choice. None of the neighborhood kids had any interest in the sport, and it took him half a year to find a club team, which required an hourlong drive.

His first encounter with Kansas City came years later, when he traveled to Johnson County for a junior college game.

“I thought Kansas City was the most boring place on earth,” Espinoza later said. “I never wanted to come back.”

He didn’t have much of a choice. After pleading with the league to sign Espinoza to a pre-draft MLS contract — which took two attempts — Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes selected Espinoza 11th overall in the 2008 SuperDraft.

Almost immediately, he blossomed in his new home. He became an MLS All-Star. He received a call-up to the Honduran national team, and he joined the squad again for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Eventually, his performances caught the eye of English Premier League club Wigan, which offered him a chance to reach a lifelong goal of playing in the world’s most competitive league. He accepted the opportunity — albeit reluctantly — after the 2012 season.

“It was the most difficult moment of my career,” he said. “I did not want to leave Kansas City.”

Nevertheless, in two years with Wigan, Espinoza says he never regretted the move. But it gradually became harder to accept — especially when Sporting Kansas City captured the 2013 MLS Cup.

On a team bus ride on Dec. 7, 2013, Espinoza watched the MLS championship match on a laptop computer. Several of his teammates crowded around him after betting on the match. On Espinoza’s advice, their money was on Sporting KC.

Sporting KC prevailed in a league-record 10 rounds of penalty kicks against Real Salt Lake. After watching his former teammates hoist the MLS championship trophy, Espinoza came to realization.

“My heart was still in Kansas City,” he said. “That’s when I knew.”

The return, of course, is merely hours away.

On Sunday evening, Espinoza will walk onto the Sporting Park field, dressed in a newly-minted Sporting Blue and navy uniform, and provide a signature moment to the franchise’s 20th season.

And a symbolic one. The franchise’s growth will perhaps never be better exhibited Sunday, when Sporting KC welcomes back an all-star, a World Cup player who opted to return to MLS rather than continue a dream of playing in Europe.

In many ways, really, Espinoza, 28, has mirrored that growth. Twenty years ago, as MLS celebrated its inaugural season, he played pick-up games in a Honduran stadium that sprouted his love for soccer. That stadium sits only 50 miles north of the San Pedro Sula, recognized today as the most violent city in the world. A professional soccer career seemed like a long shot, even if fortunetellers in the community thought otherwise.

Yet on Sunday, Espinoza rejoins Sporting KC, with the club’s CEO, Robb Heineman, referring to him as the final piece to another MLS Cup.

Perhaps, Espinoza suggested, it has come together just as neatly as it sounds, after all.

“I guess my father was right,” Espinoza said. “This is the American Dream. I’m living it right here in Kansas City.”

This story was originally published March 7, 2015 at 2:56 PM with the headline "Sporting Kansas City’s Roger Espinoza is the epitome of the American Dream."