🇲🇽🇺🇸 From Mexico City's 'barrio bravo' to Hollywood's bright lights: Omar Campos took a long road to MLS
After learning the game on dirt fields in Tepito & learning life lessons on the back of a motorbike, the LAFC fullback knows what it means to put in a day's work
Hey, it’s Jon! I just published a story with my friends at Backheeled, one I’ve been looking to tell for several months now. Here’s a little taste, or you can click through to read the full piece now at Backheeled!
Back here tomorrow with a full newsletter for premium subscribers…
The app pings. The son groans, then hangs on as his father begins to pilot the motorcycle through the wide, crisscrossing streets of Mexico City. The embarrassment the son felt at going into a restaurant and picking up the food vanished days ago, but what he really wants to do is rest. Or train. Or do anything else. Anything else but hop off this motorcycle to grab a to-go order, then get back on and hop back off, figure out how to drop off the food at the right apartment and do it all over again. All day. From noon until 9 p.m.
Deep down, though, he’s happy to help. Proud. The family may be from a notorious neighborhood in Mexico City, the kind of place that when you plug it into Google, it wonders if you want to know if it’s safe, if it’s the roughest neighborhood in town, if it’s really true what they say about the crime and cartels. But it’s home, and he’s happy to be back, happy to be from there.
Four years later, the son would score the winning goal in the U.S. Open Cup final, his first goal for Los Angeles FC, one of the powers of MLS.
But they don’t know that yet. All they know is the father is dragging the son along on his Uber Eats run so he can learn the value of hard work.
For Omar Campos, the lesson stuck.
