Sporting KC veteran Roger Espinoza retires after MLS career filled with highlights

Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes attended the NCAA National Soccer Championship’s Final Four in 2007.

One player’s skill-set jumped out immediately, and Vermes knew right away that he wanted this player to join the team known then as the KC Wizards.

Vermes called the league office and asked Major League Soccer to sign the player — Roger Espinoza — to a Generation Adidas contract.

“They said it doesn’t work that way,” Vermes said.

The manager was insistent. But league officials told him they’d asked other coaches around MLS, and they didn’t seem to share that enthusiasm — so they wouldn’t do it.

“I said, ‘I don’t understand that,’” Vermes recalled. “I said, ‘I have two first-round draft picks. I said, ‘I’ll pick him with one of those two first-round draft picks, 100%. If he’s still available, and I have a pick ready, I’m picking him.’

“So the next thing you know, they’re talking to him about a Generation Adidas contract, and I picked him at 11.”

Espinoza, 37, officially announced his retirement on Wednesday. The club plans to honor him at halftime of Sporting KC’s match against Austin FC on Saturday night at Children’s Mercy Park.

“I thought this was the time to call it quits,” Espinoza told The Star in an exclusive interview.

“But not from amateur tournaments,” he added with a laugh.

‘I couldn’t have imagined it’

Espinoza’s family immigrated to the United States from Honduras when he was young. He played high school and club soccer in the Denver area before attending Yavapai College in Arizona.

That’s not exactly the way most make it in American soccer, much less have the type of career the Espinoza has enjoyed.

“Once you go to junior college, you kind of disappear from the radar of any professional soccer in America,” Espinoza said. “Junior college is not the highest level of college soccer in America. If anything, it’s the lowest.”

Espinoza had hoped to play NCAA Division I soccer and just didn’t receive interest from those programs. But his coach at Yavapai, Mike Pantalione, told him that as long as he played well, four-year schools would come around eventually.

“He wasn’t wrong about that,” Espinoza said.

As much as possible, Pantalione hid letters those four-year schools sent to Espinoza until after his season was over.

“It was important for him to take care of the task at hand and not look too far ahead or get distracted with the goals and objectives of the programs he would be associated with at the particular time,” Pantalione told The Star.

Espinoza ate at Jack Stack BBQ, stayed in a hotel near the Ikea in Merriam and caught a baseball game at Kauffman Stadium three years before getting drafted by Sporting KC.

Pantalione is a die-hard baseball fan — a Phillies fan. He even booked Yavapai’s preseason road trips for games that his team could play near baseball stadiums he could visit.

That’s how Yavapai came to Overland Park, Kansas in 2005 to play Johnson County Community College. Pantalione also purchased 26 tickets for his soccer team to watch a Royals baseball game.

Two years later, Espinoza transferred to Ohio State, and after a year there, he caught Vermes’ eye.

The rest is history.

‘He was a winner’

Espinoza went on to win two U.S. Open Cups, the English FA Cup in one of the tournament’s greatest upsets and represent his home nation of Honduras in two world cups and the 2012 Olympics — all while cementing his legacy as a legend with Sporting KC.

His on-field record with Sporting KC in MLS regular-season and postseason play: 150 wins, 118 losses and 92 draws.

The winning was nothing new to Espinoza. In his two years at Yavapai, he amassed a record of 46-2-3. His team had a plus-129 goal differential and an average margin of victory of 2.5 goals.

The win-loss records, trophies and other accolades lend credence to Vermes’ assertion that “he’s a winner.” But this was also evident in Espinoza’s work ethic and on-field demeanor — “a pure winner,” Vermes reiterated.

“I could use all the words,” Vermes said, “but they’re all the same.

“It’s his tenacity, his aggressiveness with and without the ball, his desire to dominate his opponent ... You could see the team aspects in him, like the fight for the team. You could see it all.”

Espinoza said his taste for winning as a pro really came to fruition in 2012. Against Brazil in the Olympics that year, he scored and played so well that he was given a standing ovation — even as he jogged off the field after receiving a red card.

It was evident he had an internal tenacity and sought to prove himself constantly.

“No one was stopping me,” Espinoza said. “The only people who could stop me are the people who actually decide if I get to play or not. But I was going to make it hard for them to leave me on the bench.”

That winning mentality was honed and developed alongside Sporting KC’s championship core of Matt Besler, Graham Zusi, Chance Meyers, Seth Sinovic ... and Espinoza, of course. Each played a core role for a club that had taken its lumps in the first 10 games of the 2011 season but by the end of 2013 was hoisting the MLS Cup.

“We were losing games, and you as a player start building character either the wrong way or the right way,” Espinoza said. “I think at that time in the locker room with those guys, we started building a positive mindset.

“We took every game so seriously … We were good. We just couldn’t figure out how to win as a team. After the 10th game, and then playing at home and winning all those games, I think secured that group like, ‘Hey, now we know how to win.’”

Espinoza brought that mentality overseas to Wigan, too, when his squad — placed last in the Premier League at the time, defeated Manchester City to win the English F.A. Cup in one of the greatest final upsets in the tournament’s history.

‘People think I’m a dirty player’

Espinoza’s dogged playing style was always apparent. He never backed down from a fight. He went into every challenge full bore.

Some of those interactions flew under the radar of MLS referees. A lot of them did not. Espinoza committed 532 fouls in his MLS career. He also ranks second all-time for career fouls at Yavapai, according to Pantalione, who added that “none of those fouls got the team in trouble.”

During his time in MLS, Espinoza received 85 yellow cards. He also remains the most red-carded player in MLS history, drawing the dreaded ejection 13 times.

“I don’t think I ever went into a game and tried to hurt someone,” he said. “But I did go into a game and put in all the effort I could. If there was a ball that was 50/50, I would go for it.

“... A lot of fans when you don’t go into a 50/50, they start calling you names and saying, ‘Oh, that guy’s scared. That guy doesn’t care about the team.’ And when you don’t do that, they scoop, score, and guess who’s going on the bench? You’re going on the bench.

It was a fine line for Espinoza, but he knew what was needed of him in the middle of the park.

“For my team, I was that guy who needed to make sure that I win balls in the middle,” he said. “In the middle, we can’t make any mistakes. You make a mistake? It’s a counter-attack.”

Bottom line, Espinoza hated to lose anything, be it a match or a 50/50 ball in the middle of the field.

“I wanted to put every ounce of effort I could into the game,” he said. “And sometimes that got me in trouble.”

What’s next for Roger Espinoza?

Espinoza hasn’t ruled out competing in amateur competitions like the TST tournament. He was a member of the Wrexham squad in this year’s edition.

Earlier in the spring, he signed a short-term contract with the Des Moines Menace in the U.S. Open Cup. Des Moines fell to Union Omaha, thus missing out on an opportunity to face Sporting KC in the next round.

Espinoza is sure to turn up at future Sporting KC games and, of course, at home matches played by the KC Current. At the latter, he’ll no doubt be exuberantly supporting his wife, Lo LaBonta, a veteran star of Kansas City’s National Women’s Soccer League squad.

But professionally, he’s done playing. So what’s next?

“I don’t know if I want to coach,” he said. “I definitely want to be involved in the environment of a team. I just don’t know to what extent.”