Awesome article thanks for sharing. Ricardo seems like an great and humble young man, rooting for him now more than even before.If you haven’t read this article, I highly recommend it. It’s a great profile of Ricardo Pepi, his family, and the issues of identity for dual national players.
The unstoppable dreams of USMNT prodigy Ricardo Pepi
After a sensational USMNT debut, Ricardo Pepi is ready to take on the world. Wherever he goes, he'll carry his borderland hometown with him.www.espn.com
I have to add, there were some points in this piece that I felt like I was reading a novel about a young boy trying to leave the borderlands. Very very impressive writing and you can tell Roberto José Andrade Franco is writing from a place few of us understand.
This part stuck out in particular:
"It's disquieting to notice how few things grow here. The barren surroundings don't help. Out in the wide-open spaces of West Texas and Northern Mexico, it's easy to get lost.
To live here is to feel the questions that are as omnipresent as the mountains surrounding the region and as persistent as the winds racing down from them. On the worst of days that wind howls. It makes the desert floor dance until the sand blocks the sun and turns the sky from a hue of blue to a reddish-brown.
That wind can rip the roof off buildings and tear doors from hinges. It can choke and blind you, sometimes worse. It's on those days when it feels like we should all run away from this desert. Run away from this separate world between two countries. On those days when it sounds like some invisible hand is continually throwing dirt against locked doors and windows, it's like the wind carries the existential questions that most here wrestle with."
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