For San Diego

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When I was 15 years old, I left San Diego to live in London on my own. I was going there to play for Fulham, but I didn’t bring a coat. There are no seasons in California so I just never had to own one. I remember freezing every day at the train station until someone took me to go buy one. 

At that age, moving halfway around the world by yourself is completely crazy. Looking back at it, I’m surprised it was even legal.

Now that I’m home playing for San Diego FC, I’ve thought a lot about why I decided to leave. 

I’ve always been a pretty relaxed person. I’ll “go with the flow” and not complain. In some ways that’s good as a professional athlete, because it helps you show up every day and work hard no matter how you feel. Respect authority. Do what you have to do. Those are pretty basic things that set you up for success in football. It’s a lot like how I imagine the military would be. You get told where to be, what time to be there, when to eat, what to eat, how to train, how to rest. It’s difficult for some people to live like that, but I’ve always enjoyed the routine of it.

In a lot of ways, the decision to move to London was made before I was even born, for two key reasons: 

1) My dad had already decided that I was going to be a professional footballer (like a lot of dads before him). 

2) I was born with the right blend of athleticism, ego and willingness to do what people told me. 

This combination led me to dribble through cones my whole childhood. You can ask anyone who grew up in Carmel Valley the same time that I did. Every single day that I wasn’t playing a game, my dad would take me to a park after school, and we'd start practicing. Left foot, right foot, in the air, on the ground, around a dog. On some days I hated it, but the truth is that it’s the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. 

Those hours with my dad developed my relationship with the ball, and my absolute favourite thing about football is creativity. The feeling when you’ve come up with something on the spot to solve a difficult problem ... It’s special. It’s the reason I fell in love with the game. 

The same goes for watching other players come up with moments of magic. As a kid, I never watched full professional matches, just YouTube videos of Messi, Neymar, Iniesta, and Brazilian Ronaldo. And then I would go out and try to replicate it. 

When you’re a kid, football just feels different.

When I was 13, my dad got an email from Fulham. They wanted me to come train with them for a week. We went, and after a few more trials over the next two years, they made me an offer. Somehow, it felt like the easiest decision to make. It’s pretty crazy to read myself typing this up right now, but that was 100% where my head was at. 

Joining Fulham felt so natural. Just go with the flow. This is what young players do if they want to become professional. 

Of course, there was no San Diego FC back then. No MLS on my doorstep. It would have made a huge difference for me to go to a San Diego game with my dad, and see a great player in my position. My mom wanted me to get into a good college (she went to Stanford), and I could have done that by staying in the city. 

Had San Diego FC existed at that time, I wonder if I would have left. 

It’s a privilege to be back home. I live here with my wife, close to my parents, and every other Saturday I play in front of 30,000 people from my city.

- Luca de la Torre

Fulham was hard. Everyone talks about the weather, but that was probably the least difficult thing. The brutal part was the culture shock. I was thrown into a professional environment as a 15-year-old, without the close physical support of my family. I didn’t make that many friends at my school, and even though I was staying with a host family, I felt lonely. I joke with my mom now that she raised me over Skype.

I’d always been one the best players on my teams in San Diego, but the players at the Fulham academy were fighting for their lives, because to have a kid on a pro contract is a big deal financially to a lot of families in England. Your teammate was also your rival, the guy who was going after your spot on the team. You’d say “good morning,” but you were both thinking, I’m going to crush this guy.

A few days after I’d arrived, I was already wondering if coming to London was the right call. And then I remember we were training one day, when out of the blue these two players squared up and started punching each other. 

It was a real fistfight. I just couldn’t believe it. 

Despite all that, I managed to show up every day and do my best. For any kids reading this, that is the main lesson I hope you’ll take away from this story. You never know for sure if you’ll make it in football, but if you show up every day, no matter the circumstances, your chances are higher. That's guaranteed. 

I saw so many players get eaten up by the stress, physically and mentally. Sometimes I would make friends on the team, and overnight they’d be gone. 

They were sold or loaned out. You never saw them again. 

Fast forward seven years, and I was facing the giant black hole between the academy and the first team. I’d already seen plenty of really good players get sucked into it, and as a 22-year-old with only 14 first-team games, I was a prime candidate to be next. 

In a way that really woke me up. The idea of getting lost in the system terrified me. I did a lot of thinking, and I decided to take more responsibility for my own situation. 

No more “going with the flow.” 

I sacked my agent and got a new one. When Fulham wanted me to sign a new deal, I refused. I played as many games with the reserve team as I could, so that I’d attract interest from other clubs. That change in mentality completely saved my career. I ended up signing for Heracles Almelo, a club playing in the Dutch Eredivisie, and it was like starting a new life as a player. To be important, to play regularly, to feel that you have a purpose ... I can’t stress enough how critical that is to the mental health of players. It gave me the confidence to be more ambitious. 

I wanted to go to a World Cup, and by taking my chances I made it happen.

Hay que soñar en grande, as they say in Spanish. 

When Heracles was relegated in my second season, I was signed by Celta Vigo. La Liga was a dream come true, both for me and my dad, and the Spanish side of our family reached out to him to congratulate us. Of course there were challenges in Vigo: I arrived with a Spanish last name but no ability to speak the language. My dad tried to fix it by not speaking to me in English for a whole year. I also had injuries, and changes of coaches that didn’t go my way, but that happens with all players. What I remember the most are all the special moments.  

Goals. Assists. Playing in the most beautiful stadiums in the world. 

I loved playing in Vigo, and I loved living there.

Then last summer, I was with the U.S. National Team in Kansas when Tyler Heaps, the San Diego FC sporting director, flew out to see me. MLS had finally arrived in San Diego, and he wanted me to be there for it. But as much as I loved the idea of coming home, it was difficult to convince me to leave Vigo. I wasn’t ready to make such a big step. I needed to be 100% sure that it was the best thing for my career. 

When the national team qualified for the World Cup, the coach gave every player a coin, and when we got it, we saw that it was inscribed with a phrase. 

“Behind the mountain is another mountain”

I’m not big on quotes, but I like that one. Playing for Celta had been my mountain for so long, and now that I’d reached the top, it was difficult to walk away from it. 

But things happen so fast in football. I got an ankle injury in August, and pretty soon I felt like I needed a change to get my game back together. When the January transfer window opened, it was 100% clear that the best thing for me was to go. 

When we met in Kansas, Tyler had said a lot of things that I liked. The style of play would be brave and attacking. We were going to dominate the ball and create as many chances as possible. The academy would be modelled on Right to Dream, which means that every kid who plays for the academy is guaranteed to leave with a professional contract or a degree. That part really struck home for me. Especially when I think about the kids that I grew up playing with in San Diego. So many of them were good enough to go pro. When I was 13, almost every single U14 national team starter was from the Southern California area. Three of us played on the same Sunday League team in City Heights. Most of those kids didn’t make it because they were born in a city without a professional team and didn’t have a clear path. 

That seemed like a really noble thing to do, and something that would make a huge difference to their lives. To have the chance to be part of that felt like a special opportunity. 

It was about time. When I look at the list of expansion teams that arrived in MLS before San Diego, I can’t believe that it took so long. This is a football city, everyone knows that. This sport is in the blood of the people here. 

It’s a privilege to be back home. I live here with my wife, close to my parents, and every other Saturday I play in front of 30,000 people from my city. It gives me a lot of pride to say that. 

I can guarantee you that I’ll do everything I can to help this team be successful. 

To give those fans a reason to show up.

To help kids in this city fall in love with the game, the way I did. 

That’s my mountain now.