Cristian Roldan reached the U.S. World Cup largely by staying in public high school soccer for four years—an increasingly rare route as academies and elite clubs reshape how young players get seen.
In Seattle this week, Cristian Roldan is preparing for another World Cup moment, one that started long before he ever left Southern California.
He grew up in Pico Rivera. got to El Rancho while still playing four years at a public high school. and—at 31—has become a living reminder of how unusual his path has become. The odds that he and Haji Wright. who grew up less than three years and 30 miles away. would end up as U.S. teammates on not one but two World Cup teams seemed “astronomical,” the story goes. Yet for Roldan. the details of how it happened are what people remember most: he stayed in high school longer than nearly anyone else on the roster.
“I might be the last one,” Roldan said. “I hope not.”
High school soccer used to be the foundation for many American players. On the 2002 World Cup team—the only American team to reach the tournament quarterfinals—eighteen players played for their high school teams. By 2022, only one man on the roster had played four years for a public school: Roldan.
This World Cup, opened for the U.S. in Inglewood, about a 45-minute drive from his boyhood home. Roldan’s schedule then moves north to Seattle for the Americans’ match against Australia on Friday. where he played two years at the University of Washington and 12 seasons as an all-star midfielder with the Sounders. winning two MLS titles.
“What I will say was it made it more difficult to be here, play[ing] four years in high school,” Roldan said. “But it makes my story special.”
His brother. Cesar Roldan. an athletic trainer with the Galaxy. frames it bluntly: Cristian’s route is not the standard anymore. “Cristian did it mostly to be around his friends. He wanted to play with his buddies. That is not a standard way to make it into MLS. And forget about making [it] all the way to the national team,” Cesar said.
Cristian doesn’t argue with the reality—he just turns it into something personal. “Yeah, it’s different,” he said with a smile. “Being able to play in your backyard, have friends and family there. It’s a celebration.”
The reason his approach may be hard to repeat sits in the way youth soccer has evolved in the United States. Roldan is the third-oldest player on the U.S. team, which means the MLS academy system was just getting started when he enrolled at El Rancho in 2010. But as the academy system and the Elite Club National League became larger and more powerful. they began to draw young players away from the prep game.
Academy and elite club teams, the article describes, essentially robbed high school soccer of its best players by forcing them to choose between their high school teams and elite club programs. The commitment required is year-round, and other sports are barred.
When top players began opting for the academies, others followed if they wanted a chance to be scouted.
There is also the competitive contrast with Europe and South America—countries that often don’t have an American-scale pipeline like high school and college sports where kids can play and develop for free. “That’s not available in Germany or England, or whatever,” said Brian Schmetzer, Roldan’s coach with the Sounders. “I like the fact that the United States is a big enough country where we can give kids opportunities to continue playing.”.
But the access is uneven. Moving from a free neighborhood high school team to an academy can be expensive. creating a “pay-to-play” barrier that often restricts those programs to wealthier families. Travel to games and practices can also become a hurdle. And with many high school-age players unable to drive, a parent has to handle the long list of trips.
That leaves little room for work, which can add another layer of financial pressure.
Cesar Roldan said it simply. “My parents would have done whatever for us. So they would have made things happen. But he really didn’t have any of those options. There was just not the opportunity.”
Paul Caliguiri, who played in two World Cups before retiring as the second-most-capped player in U.S. Soccer history, says the effect will be that some talented players are overlooked. He pointed to a “slow strangulation of high school soccer” and said more qualified players choose high school soccer rather than full-time academies. But many who don’t go full-time when the opportunity presents, he said, do so because of transportation. “We need to have more full-time training offered to players without increasing the ‘pay to play’ cost,” Caliguiri said.
Dominic Picon, who coached all three Roldan brothers at El Rancho, agreed that kids can disappear from the radar. “We’re losing a ton of kids who never get seen,” he said. “There’s a lot of kids that get lost in the shuffle simply because we have a very limited scope of how we find players. If you look at our three main sports — baseball, basketball and football — virtually all of them play high school sports. They all come through that pipeline.”.
Roldan. the son of a Guatemalan immigrant father and a Salvadoran-born mother. said he didn’t think about those barriers when he decided to play with the neighborhood kids in high school. He looked to his older brother Cesar and wanted to share “a similar path.” He also wanted something specific for his hometown of Pico Rivera. which only has one high school.
“I wanted to win a trophy for the city of Pico Rivera, which only has one high school,” Roldan said.
He delivered in his senior season. Playing with his younger brother Alex. who was a junior. Roldan scored 54 goals and had 31 assists—what Picon called “video-game numbers”—to lead El Rancho to 29 wins and a CIF Southern Section title. Individually, he was named the Gatorade national player of the year.
Alex later played alongside Cristian with the Sounders and went on to captain the Salvadoran national team.
Picon said he knew the brothers were good, but he didn’t see a World Cup coming. “When you’re coaching them, they’re in high school. You never look at them and say, ‘You know, these guys are going to be in the World Cup someday.’”
There was even doubt about college. Alex was headed to a junior college in Arizona before receiving a last-minute offer from Seattle University. Cristian. despite his award-winning senior season. had few firm offers from top schools. partly because he insisted on playing high school soccer and partly because he was 5-foot-7.
“What hurt him is playing at a public school,” Picon said. “His rise was improbable because of where he came from, but also when he did play in front of [college] coaches, I think his size was something that dissuaded coaches.”
The contrast is stark with Wright, whose exposure at the academy level helped him become one of the country’s top youth players and opened up professional opportunities before he was old enough to vote.
In the end, the scholarship story for Roldan wasn’t just about performance. It came down to timing and what his mother, Ana, did.
When Washington coach Jamie Clark inadvertently sat down next to her at the Surf Cup showcase in San Diego, Ana urged him to take a look at her son. Clark did, then called Picon the next week.
“He’s a legit player,” Picon remembers telling Clark. “He’s better than 99% of the academy players out there. It’s just because of where he plays, the city that he’s from.”
Picon was right. In his first season at Washington, Roldan was the Pac-12 freshman of the year. After his sophomore season, he turned pro. MLS stardom and two World Cup selections followed.
And even with the luck, the coach says the foundation was at home. “But that good fortune started at home with parents who put their faith in public schools, then saw that faith rewarded,” the article says.
Picon described how his parents’ trust in the public school system was built through the steps of school. At the elementary level, teachers were tasked with making sure students had a grasp of English. At middle school, teachers were tasked with preparing them for high school. “All three were accepted into a four-year [college], their kids,” Picon said.
In other words, Roldan’s path didn’t just depend on talent. It depended on a family believing that public schools could do the job—and taking that belief all the way to adulthood.
“It’s the quintessential American story, right?” Picon offered. “You have immigrant parents. They come here and they put a lot of trust in the public school system. At the elementary level, the teachers were tasked with making sure they have a grasp of English. They did that. At middle school, they were tasked with getting them prepared for high school and they did that. All three were accepted into a four-year [college], their kids. Where Cristian and his brothers lucked out is having the parents that they did.”.
The World Cup route, Picon suggested, doesn’t always follow a single formula. Sometimes the path you take matters less than how and where you start. And for Roldan. the bigger question now is whether a four-year public high school stay can still lead to the biggest stage—or whether his might be the kind of story that stops being possible.
Getting there, the article concludes, isn’t always determined by the path you take. Sometimes the most important factors are how and where you started.
Cristian Roldan Pico Rivera El Rancho U.S. World Cup Haji Wright MLS academies Elite Club National League high school soccer pay-to-play Sounders