🇸🇻 With Águila, Darwin Ceren is making his childhood dreams come true

The former MLS midfielder now looks to get the historic club back to the Concacaf Champions Cup for the first time in a decade.

It is, likely, the dream of every child who puts on a sports jersey for a youth team that is inspired by a professional team. One day, just maybe, you’ll play for the actual Cardinals or Bulldogs or Rangers.

Darwin Cerén is living that dream.

“When I was little I always saw Águila as a team that won titles, that played well and had players that really drew my attention,” Cerén told me this week. “I always watched the team, and in fact played for a team called Aguilas Negras when I was a boy for the majority of my career as a kid. I always identified with Águila and watched Águila’s game with my brother.

“We always said, ‘One day, we’ll play for Aguila’”

Now Darwin, an eight-year veteran of MLS who is El Salvador’s most-capped player all-time, and Oscar, two years his junior, are suiting up for the real Águila, hoping to help the proud institution return to the heights it used to regularly reach.

CD Águila once won the Concacaf Champions Cup, lifting the trophy in 1976 with wins over Robinhood in the final and León in the semifinal - the second leg of which León forfeited after a brawl.

As the Surinamese finalist and forfeited semi indicate, those were much different times. It has now been more than a decade since Águila made Concacaf’s top club tournament, but they’re two results away from earning a ticket to the 2025 CCC.

The Cerén brothers and their teammates play the first leg of a Copa Centroamericana quarterfinal series with Real Estelí tonight in Nicaragua before next week’s home leg.

“For me, it’d be important because it’s a team I love and really appreciate,” the ex-Dynamo, San Jose and Orlando City midfielder said. “It’d be great for me to qualify for Concacaf Champions Cup, have the chance to play against MLS teams - teams, obviously, I know, a league I know after being there for a long time.

“It’d be getting back to that good competition I had before against them, which would feel good once again facing those players and the teams I played before.”

While Cerén became an Águila fan for somewhat silly reasons, he kept following the team when he moved to the U.S. to join Orlando City for other reasons entirely. Oscar had signed there after leaving Juventud Independiente, the club where both started their careers.

Even as Oscar went on to Alianza, Darwin had no doubt where he wanted to go when it became clear his best move was returning to El Salvador after a number of years playing in MLS. “I didn’t care about any team that wasn’t Aguila,” he said.

The 34-year-old Cerén has impressed with what he has in his legs, captaining the team to the 2023 Apertura title and setting the tone for the Copa Centroamericana.

He credited the ownership group not only for bringing him back, signing an extension in January to stay on another year, but also making other signings to help the team seek out that Concacaf Champions Cup place.

Still, there’s little doubt in San Miguel, the country’s third-largest city where Águila is based. This is Ceren’s team, and he’s the leader.

“I understand the commitment I have to the team and above all the example I have to be for the youngest players who always have seen me as a reference because I was playing abroad for a long time, for being a captain of the national team, being a player with the most matches in the national team history,” he said. “All that is responsibility I take on without a fuss because I know I’m a player who always gives his best, always trains at 100 percent, always is trying to be that example of pushing forward, setting the rhythm we’re all working at.

“I’m not a comfortable player. I always want more.”

Like many national-team mainstays, there have been calls for Cerén to be left off the Selecta roster by fans frustrated with more of the same. Those calls were loudest when El Salvador opened World Cup qualification with a draw against Puerto Rico at the Estadio Cuscatlán. He missed El Salvador’s September Concacaf Nations League matches with a knock but is likely to return for a pair of matches against St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

There, he hopes to show the form he has with his club, protecting the defense and chipping in going forward with an individual goal.

But, first things first, Cerén wants to get Águila back on the stage and make more young kids fall in love with the “Aguiluchos” like he did all those years ago.

“I feel happy here and also happy to have this chance to be in this stage with the team, trying to get to the semifinals of the Central American Cup,” he said. “It’s a tournament that has really left an impact on each of my teammates, and the club too because we’ve made the effort to do things well to get to where we’re at. We’re enjoying it.”