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ONE HEART, TWO ANTHEMS

Playing for your country, against your country

June 10^th, 2019

In a split second, a dream dissolved into a nightmare.

Ryann Torrero was back in her hometown of Los Angeles, fresh off a pro stint in Switzerland, and training for a shot in the USA's newly-established National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). On the way back from practice, Ryann and her best friend and training partner, Kaitlin, were hit by a speeding driver, sending their car twisting through the air and crashing back down to earth, leaving their vehicle scattered in pieces across the freeway.

“Our car flipped clear over their hood,” Ryann said. “We proceeded to violently roll multiple times once we hit the pavement and skidded across all four lanes of traffic, upside down and sideways, with sparks flying everywhere. We then hit and completely demolished a freeway sign, which rolled us yet again. I believed I was going to die. I thought I had already lost Kaitlin. I just prayed it would end soon.”

Both Ryann and Kaitlin were lucky to leave the scene of the accident alive. However, the significant injuries and lengthy legal dispute, not to mention the psychological and emotional trauma of both, effectively sidelined Ryann’s career as a goalkeeper.

“I was told I would never play again."

In the two years after the accident, Ryann managed to create a new, full-time career as a model, but her love of the game never left. Slowly, but surely, she was pulled back in again.

“People would ask me if I was still playing and I would say, ‘No, I'm retired.’ I couldn’t really talk about my accident and I couldn’t really talk about soccer [because of legal proceedings]. I decided to make a really big push into modeling, but, as time went on, I still couldn't get rid of the itch to play. I knew I needed to see if it was possible to have a career in soccer again. I didn’t want to be so easily defeated.”

And so, she plotted her comeback, one step at a time.

First, Ryann signed with the Santa Clarita Blue Heat, a leading local amateur team, where she rediscovered her confidence and love of playing. Her good performances there led to a short-term pro contract with the Chicago Red Stars, where she finally achieved the NWSL ambitions she once thought impossible.

Then, the truly unexpected happened. Ryann got a call from theFederación de Fútbol de Chile asking her to represent the Chilean national team, which had recently qualified for the 2019 Women’s World Cup. The Federation had discovered through a mutual contact that Ryann’s mother emigrated from Santiago as a young girl, coming to California with her family in search of more economic opportunity.

Though her mother never went back to her homeland, Chilean culture was a constant part of Ryann’s life in the United States: “I always felt this Chilean presence. At all of our family parties and get-togethers, there was always Chilean music, Chilean food, Chilean desserts, and there’s always been an appreciation for that culture.”

Never before, though, did she imagine she would actually go to the country to play soccer and retrace her family tree.

“It was very emotional for me,” Ryann said. “I was playing at a level that I wasn’t quite sure I could ever get to, although I always hoped and dreamed and worked for that. To be able to accomplish my dreams in a way that literally put pieces of my family back together, and formed this portrait that I never quite understood but always felt was there, was magnificent. That was a dream come true.”

Between empanada bites atRincon Chileno, Ryann and her mother, Marie, walk through their family history. The South American bakery that has united Chilean Angelenos for a half-century and is affectionately referred to as “LA’s second Chilean consulate” offers tastes and smells that link Marie back to her childhood, before she came to the United States and survived middle school without knowing a word of English upon arrival.

Marie reflects upon the thrill of reuniting with her father, who fled the oppressive government of Augusto Pinochet in order to build a better future for his family. He managed to set up a tailoring business stateside and Marie fell in love with her high-school sweetheart, Ryann’s father.

“Santiago was my mother’s home and was everything she knew,” Ryann said. “But, when she moved, she never looked back. She never went back. For her, that was really a life that she left in the past, while she created her new life here in America.”

But, decades after her mother left her homeland, Ryann would return in her place. After years of exhausting graft and adversity; bouncing around amateur, semi-professional, and professional ranks; playing for two different colleges; battling the car crash, the lawsuit, and the physical and emotional consequences of both, Ryann traveled to Chile to write a new chapter for herself and her family.

“I flew halfway around the world to not only reignite my career, but also my roots,” she said. “While this has been an incredible thing on a soccer level, it’s also been an incredible thing for my family. It’s been incredible for my mother, reopening her culture and her family through me, and I think it's really reignited her pride, passion, and love for where she comes from. She left Chile to search for more opportunity; little did she know, the place that she left would actually create the most powerful opportunity for her daughter.”

There’s a final twist to the story, though.

During the draw for the World Cup, Chile were placed into Group F: The same group as the USA.

Ryann, now discovering and exploring her Chilean heritage, will suit up against the country where she grew up and learned the game. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“There’s an 8-year-old in me who loves the idea of representing and playing for the USA, but now I’m a 28-year-old woman, with a life of experience and love for my family and culture, enamored with the idea of representing that, and playing against the country and players I know so well and admire so much. I will be humbled and filled with pride when I step on the field. It will be one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

The World Cup is about national identity, but we do this idea a deep disservice by thinking of it merely as players representing exclusively one of the 24 countries in the tournament.

When players like Ryann step on the field, they may carry a single country’s crest on their chest, but their heart often holds a multitude of nations, cultures, and communities never visible to those in the stands or at home.

Ryann represents not only the diversity of American soccer—something that goes far beyond the diversity of the US Women’s National Team—but the complexity of identity in a sport whose discussions of it at the international level can be frustratingly one-dimensional. Her story expresses the difficulty and joy of knowing one’s self; the understanding of how football not only reflects national identity, as is often discussed, but refracts and complicates it; and why the soul of the American game will not only be represented by Team USA in this World Cup, but by teams lining up on the other side of the pitch as well.

Every footballer dreams of hearing the national anthems play while on the game’s highest stage.

When the USA and Chile meet on June 16th, that dream will come true for Ryann Torrero—and she’ll sing both with all her heart.

Footnotes

Photos by Hana Asano, words by Zack Goldman, video and creative by Nathen McVittie. Special thanks to the Torrero family and Where Is Football contributing editor Zito Madu.

Button Label

FootNotes

Photos by Hana Asano, words by Zack Goldman, video and creative by Nathen McVittie. Special thanks to the Torrero family and Where Is Football contributing editor Zito Madu.

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ONE HEART, TWO ANTHEMS

Playing for your country, against your country

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