World Cup 2014: Andy Najar was made in America but chose Honduras

When the Honduras team line up against France in Porto Alegre on Sunday many of the hopes of the Central American nation will rest on the 21-year-old shoulders of Andy Najar. But among USA fans there may well be a nagging feeling of what might have been.

The Anderlecht winger is one of eight current or former MLS players in the Honduran squad, but unlike players such as Jerry Bengtson at New England Revolution or Víctor “Muma” Bernárdez at San Jose Earthquakes, Najar is a product of the American youth system and was once seen as part of the future of the US national team.

Najar arrived in America from Honduras in 2007 at the age of 13, joining his parents who had already settled in Franconia, Virginia, 15 miles from Washington DC.

When the US Soccer Federation launched its youth development programme in 2007 in an effort to streamline a previously haphazard system, DC United was among the first clubs to set up an academy. Najar joined their Under-16 side in 2008 and quickly impressed his coaches. Weight training help put a little meat on his slight 5ft 7in frame and, after excelling at youth level, Najar moved up to the first team in 2010 where he made an immediate impact, being named MLS rookie of the year in his first season.

In 2011, DC United’s general manager, Dave Kasper, told the Washingtonian magazine: “He is the poster boy for what our academy system is supposed to be.”

Najar had all the makings of a future US international. However, he faced a five-year wait to become a US citizen. Although the Martinique-born David Regis had had his citizenship fast-tracked in time to feature at the 1998 World Cup, the post-9/11 climate was less amenable to bending the rules. Honduras, meanwhile, had got wind of his progress and wanted him right away and in April 2011 Najar pledged his international allegiance to them. “I had already made up my mind,” he told ESPN. “I knew where I wanted to play and who I wanted to play for.”

Still a teenager, Najar was a key part of Honduras’s spirited run to the quarter‑finals of the London 2012 Olympics. His form for club and country earned him a move to Anderlecht in January 2013, becoming the MLS’s first homegrown academy player to make a permanent move to Europe. In July he scored his first goal for his country, against Costa Rica in the Concacaf Gold Cup (handily for his family in Baltimore).

Since moving to Belgium, his star has only risen. Restored to the right wing, having been deployed at right-back in his latter days at DC United, he scored three goals in 23 games in the domestic championship and made his full Champions League debut against Olympiakos in December. Anderlecht fans voted him their player of the month in March. His performances have caught the eye of Tottenham, Hull and Valencia, among others, but in April Najar signed a new contract committing him to Anderlecht until 2018.

In an experienced Honduran squad containing 11 survivors from South Africa 2010, he is one of the fresher faces and the second-youngest member of the group.

At first glance Honduras may not be the most intimidating prospect in Group E, having won none of their six World Cup finals’ matches. However, that record includes creditable draws against the Spanish hosts and Northern Ireland in 1982 and against Switzerland in 2010. Crucially, Spain, the eventual world champions, are the only side to put more than one goal past them, in a 2-0 defeat in Johannesburg. Although they finished third in qualification behind the USA and Costa Rica, they did record a victory against Mexico in the Azteca Stadium.

Against Didier Deschamps’s team they will hope to spring the sort of surprise that engulfed France, as champions, when they lost to Senegal in the opening match of the 2002 tournament. Honduras, though, would take a draw now, with the matches against Ecuador, the least formidable of the South American contenders, and against the Swiss in sweltering Manaus offering more enticing prospects. (There will be an air of familiarity about their second match: Ecuador are coached by the Colombian Reinaldo Rueda who led Honduras in South Africa, while Luis Fernando Suárez, the Colombian in charge of Honduras, is a former Ecuador coach.)

The team showed their doggedness in keeping out England in a bruising encounter in Miami despite being reduced to 10 men for the last half-hour. That strong, uncompromising defence is Honduras’s biggest asset but if their campaign is to be more than a holding operation, they will need the injection of speed, agility and flair that Najar can provide – possibly off the bench as against Roy Hodgson’s men last Saturday.

He is the only member of Suárez’s squad never to have played professionally in Honduras despite growing up in a dirt-floored house in the tiny village of Santa Cruz de Marcovia in the southern Choluteca region. In 1998, the family home, along with others in the village, was destroyed by the deadly Hurricane Mitch. Najar’s mother moved to the US where she worked in a car wash. Later, she was joined by her husband, who found work in construction, while Andy and his two brothers remained in Santa Cruz with his grandmother.

In 2007, Najar’s parents found the money to pay a smuggler several thousand dollars to bring him to the US. The journey by car to the Texan border area took 14 days. Then, over two days and two nights, he hiked the final stretch through the desert to become one of an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the country. He arrived with next to no English but with a special talent in his boots. It is no coincidence that he received his green card, legalising his residency, at the same time as his first professional contract with DC United.

The Washington club can take pride in their part in Najar’s development from raw recruit to World Cup star. Najar is living proof that the US development system can work, although in this case it has worked for Honduras.