Ricardo Pepi Left Home at 13 and Arrives at the World Cup Carrying El Paso

The stands had emptied. Rain was hammering a youth soccer field in Texas, the kind of storm that sends every parent sprinting for their car, and one man stayed in his seat. Soaked through, alone, watching his son play. Miguel Lopez, the coach who would help shape that boy into a professional, never forgot the sight. “No one around him, the rain was falling down hard and he’s watching his son,” Lopez recalled on NBC’s podcast My New Favorite Futbolista. “That gave me a lot of respect for him.” The man in the rain was Ricardo Pepi’s father. The boy on the field grew up to become one of the most prolific strikers the United States has ever produced. And this week in Los Angeles, against Paraguay, Ricardo Pepi finally steps onto the stage his whole family spent two decades reaching for: the World Cup.

A Border City Where Kids Play to Win

Pepi’s story starts in El Paso, Texas, a city pressed against the Mexican border where soccer is not a pastime but an inheritance. The game there carries an edge that organized youth soccer in much of America lacks. “No matter what club it is, even for 5-, 6- or 7-year-old kids, here you play to win,” Lopez said. “Ricardo was one of those neighborhood kids who had a ball with him every day, at any hour.”

The family built its life around the dream. Long drives to training sessions and games, his mother holding the household together, his father patrolling the sidelines. The elder Pepi did not just watch. He coached. “My dad was very important for my career,” Pepi said. “He was my coach for 10 or 11 years. That takes time. That takes sacrifice.”

Sacrifice is the word Pepi returns to over and over when he talks about how he got here. “The most important thing is the sacrifices you have to make to get here,” he said. “Not only mine, but also my family’s, my parents, my brothers.”

Leaving Home at 13

The hardest sacrifice came early. When FC Dallas offered Pepi a place in its academy, the opportunity carried a brutal catch. Dallas sits more than 600 miles and roughly nine hours from El Paso. Pepi was 13 years old, and initially he went alone.

“If you have kids, you know what it means to let a son go alone, at 13 years old, to another big city to fulfill his dream,” Lopez said. “Yes, it is very difficult.”

It was just as hard on the other end of the arrangement. A teenager in a strange city, far from the kitchen table and the noise of his brothers, with nothing but training and time. “I had plenty of time to think about the sacrifices I had made in leaving my family,” Pepi said. “But I think it was the moment when I realized all the things my family has done for me to be where I am now.”

The family eventually moved to Dallas to join him, and it was during those years that his father sat through the rainstorm. The reunion mattered to a kid who admits domestic life was not his strength. “Life is very easy when your mother is at home,” he joked years later, remembering his first attempts at laundry as a young professional in Germany.

The Breakout and the Record

At 18, Pepi exploded. He scored 13 goals in 31 games for FC Dallas in 2021 and was named MLS Young Player of the Year. That same year he made his debut for the US men’s national team and scored in his first appearance, becoming the eighth-youngest goalscorer in the program’s history.

Europe noticed fast. In January 2022, FC Dallas sold him to FC Augsburg for what was then the highest transfer fee ever paid for a homegrown player in MLS history. Pepi was 18 years old, moving alone again, this time across an ocean.

“The first six months were very difficult obviously,” he said. “I was in a different culture, a different country, speaking a different language.”

The goals dried up in Germany, and the doubters multiplied. But Lopez argues the move made the player. “Going to Europe young was one of the best things that could have happened to him,” he said. “So he could absorb the training and the soccer culture over there, which is very different from what it is here.”

The Snub That Built a Striker

Then came the cut that still stings in El Paso. When US Soccer announced its 26-man roster for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Pepi’s name was missing. He had scored the goals that helped send the team to the tournament, and he watched it from his couch.

“It’s a dream for me, it’s also a dream for them,” he said of his family and his city. “It was difficult for everyone.”

His parents reached for the only comfort that made sense. “My parents told me that everything happens for a reason, that I should keep working,” Pepi said. “‘Maybe it’s not the World Cup you were supposed to play in.'”

What followed was a quiet, determined rebuild. A move to PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands restored his scoring touch and his confidence. For the national team he became ruthlessly efficient, piling up 13 goals in 37 caps, a strike rate that makes him one of the most productive American forwards of his generation. When the 2026 roster was announced in May, there was no suspense this time. The kid from El Paso was on the plane.

Friday Night in Los Angeles

Pepi makes his World Cup debut on June 12, when the United States opens its home tournament against Paraguay in Los Angeles. The symbolism is almost too neat. A son of the borderlands, raised between two soccer cultures, leading the line for the host nation in a tournament shared between the United States and Mexico.

He is not the only American carrying a family’s unfinished business into this World Cup. Tim Weah arrives in the tournament holding the World Cup dream his famous father never got to live. This US squad is full of such stories, players whose paths ran through sacrifice rather than privilege, and that shared history may be the team’s real foundation under the pressure of a home tournament.

Back home, El Paso is treating this month as its own. The city felt the 2022 snub collectively, and it intends to celebrate the redemption the same way. “We have all contributed, his first coach, his parents, his school teachers, the equipment managers, everyone,” Lopez said. “And I think they are very proud of what he has done and what he will continue to do in the future.”

The Family in the Stands

There is a version of this story that is about soccer: a striker’s runs, his finishing, whether he starts ahead of his rivals for the No 9 shirt or changes games from the bench. That version will play out over the coming weeks, and it will be measured in goals.

But the truer version was visible years ago on a rain-soaked field in Texas, in a father who would not leave his seat. Every long drive, every goodbye at 13, every hard winter in Germany led to this week in Los Angeles. When Pepi walks out against Paraguay, his family will be watching, just as they always have been. Near or far, win or lose, rain or shine.