Funny Who You Can Run into at Stater Bros.
So, I'm rolling down the vegetable aisle ... and I hear somebody say, "Nice hat."
And I looked up and there was a guy who looked like Ralph Perez, except about 10 years older than I remembered him ... from about 10 years ago.
Yes, it was Perez, now the University of Redlands soccer coach. He liked the cap I was wearing, because it had the U.S. National Soccer team logo on it.
Perez was an assistant coach on the 1990 U.S. World Cup team.
He's had an interesting career, to say the least.
It was a bit tricky to figure out how he could make the 1990 World Cup coaching staff because, at the time, he had limited national/international experience. Actually, he was coaching at Cal State San Bernardino.
After the World Cup, he moved into other Soccer Federation roles, and then was an assistant for more than one Major League Soccer team, including the Galaxy.
He interviewed for a couple of MLS head coaching jobs, but never got them ... and went for the UCLA job, as well. And, things happen ... and now he is coaching (well, we should note) at D3 Redlands.
His Bulldogs just got all the way to the NCAA D3 quarters before losing to Loras of Iowa 3-1. A game he thought his team could have won and deserved to win, but that's soccer, as soccer guys say. He said forward Max Bowman and goalkeeper Andrew Roraff were particularly valuable in the playoffs run.
Oh, and there's this: Had the Bulldogs won on Sunday, they would have stayed on the East Coast this week for the run-up to the final four this weekend in Orlando -- rather than go home and turn around to make their third trip to the east in three weeks. "We'd already cleared it with everyone," Perez said.
We talked about the 1990 U.S. team for a bit. That was the group of college kids who scraped into the World Cup on the strength of Paul Caligiuri's long goal at Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1989. All Trinidad needed was a tie, but Cal's goal won it, and there we all went, off to Italy the following June for the Americans' first turn in the World Cup in 40 years. (They went out in three matches, but that was expected.).
Perez, like me, said Italy 1990 "seems like yesterday, but it was a long time ago." He reflected that "we were naive, and our players were immature." Basically, it was amazing that the Americans even got there, but by making it they assured the 1994 World Cup would stay in the USA, and that became the turning point for soccer in this country.
Anyway, Perez was probably under-qualified for the U.S. job he held 17 years ago ... and now he's over-qualified for the Redlands job. He probably ought to be running an MLS team, but while he's not, he's Redlands' boon.