Frisco (Texas, USA), Jul 25 (EFE) .- The Mexican American teenager Ricardo Pepi, with just 18 years and 196 days, is since last night is the youngest player in the history of the Professional League of Soccer (MLS) that has achieved a hat trick after helping his FC Dallas team to a 4-0 victory against the Los Angeles Galaxy.
A native of the Texan town of San Elizario, near El Paso (Texas), who started playing soccer at the age of seven, achieved the new mark by beating the Gambian Kekuta Manneh, of the Vancouver Whitecaps, who was the teenager of minor who had achieved a hat trick in MLS at 18 years and 283 days.
Pepi also reached eight goals so far this season, leader of the FC Dallas team, and third-ranked on the league’s Golden Boot list.
Pepi’s football explosion has not surprised the FC Dallas executives, especially its coach, Cuban Luchy González, who has known the young promise since he was 12 years old, when he saw him for the first time in the team’s Academy.
“After what we have seen him do against the Galaxy and since the new season began, we are not facing a promise with a future but rather a player with a great present,” González said at the end of the game. “For us, Pepi is not the future, she is the present.”
In addition, its development and soccer growth has become the latest example of the philosophy of the Texan team to train and make their debut in the first team young people from their academy and Pepi represents that river of talents that supports the franchise, which ironically , still seeking his first league title in MLS.
Something that he has not achieved in part because so far all the young talent that he has developed in his Academa has immediately emigrated to European football or other MLS teams.
But both González and the FC Dallas managers do not have the same plans for Pepi, who in principle, this season is already seen as the key player who can relaunch them and get them out of the lower part of the Western Conference classification in which They meet and later place them among those who may be in the playoffs and fight for the title.
“What has been achieved against the Galaxy should serve as a springboard for the future of what we can do as a team,” said González. “We have taken a big step and that has been possible thanks to Pepi’s special night, but also to all the great team work.”
For his part, Pepi stressed that at the end of the day the most important thing had been to enjoy football on the field, feel comfortable, and see how the team also achieved an important victory at the end against one of the best franchises in MLS.
But also that in the victory there had been the memory for his entire family -Mexican emigrant parents-, which helped him so much to see the great dream of reaching the FC Dallas first team fulfilled, playing and giving him the contribution that would allow him to win, by margin of having made history and good. EFE
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