Santa Tecla FC players and especially team captain looking to make statement against Sounders

SEATTLE – In the aftermath of a stunning win last week, Santa Tecla FC captain Gerson Mayen was describing the need to prove oneself.

The midfielder lauded how his scrappy, young teammates from El Salvador had wanted to show they could defeat the 2017 MLS Cup finalist Sounders in CONCACAF Champions League play, as they had just done moments earlier by virtue of his two goals. As well, the Los Angeles native, now 29, admitted also wanting to clear up some lingering misconceptions about his own abilities.

“I just want to prove myself,” he said. “I want to prove that I can play in some of the top leagues. I’d love to make it back to MLS someday.”

Mayen played 12 games for defunct MLS squad Chivas USA in 2009 and then four more over the next two seasons – including one at CenturyLink Field against the Sounders in 2011 – before continuing his career in his parents’ native El Salvador in 2012. On Thursday, he’ll revisit CenturyLink Field for his first match in an MLS stadium in seven years as Santa Tecla visits the Sounders to decide their two-leg Champions League opening round series.

Santa Tecla leads 2-1 on aggregate, but the Sounders and coach Brian Schmetzer are promising they’ll throw a much better lineup at the Salvadorans this time. The Sounders have made it a priority to go deep in this tournament and do not relish the prospect of being upstaged by a Santa Tecla side considered a decisive underdog on paper.

After two years playing in El Salvador, Mayen hooked up with the first division Santa Tecla side in 2014 and never looked back at his abandoned U.S. career.

Well, almost never.

“I sometimes wonder what I could have done differently,” he said. “But I’ve enjoyed my time in El Salvador and with Santa Tecla especially. It’s a good quality of play.”

His former coach on that Chivas USA team and in its youth academy beforehand had been one Predrag Radosavljević, a Serbian-born former U.S. Men’s National Team member better known as “Preki” – now an assistant to Sounders coach Schmetzer. Mayen and Preki met on the sidelines before the teams played their Champions League opener in El Salvador.

“I told him I was proud of him and the way he’d been playing,” Preki said. “I wish he was playing in better places but at the moment he’s happy where he is. He said ‘If I go somewhere else, it has to be at a good level, or else it’s similar to what I have here.”

Mayen nearly set up the first Santa Tecla goal late in the first half, threading a perfect pass to send a teammate in alone and forcing Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei into a huge stop. Then, in the 67th minute, Mayen pounced on a loose ball from 8 yards out and drilled it past Frei to tie the game.

Eight minutes later, after a penalty call, he beat Frei low to his right for the game’s decisive goal. It was the first Champions League win ever for Santa Tecla, which has captured three titles in El Salvador despite only 11 years of existence.

Preki left as Chivas coach “by mutual consent” after Mayen’s debut 2009 season. He said he always felt Mayen had the talent to do big things if he applied himself.

“I remember a talented kid who was a little bit unfit,” Preki said this week. “But he had incredible soccer and football IQ. It was disappointing to me that after I left that organization he kind of slipped away from the football world in this country because I think he had great potential.

“He just had to work on different aspects of the game in terms of fitness and mobility and things like that.”

Mayen feels he has improved his game. He once played for the U.S. U20 team and more recently has donned the Salvadoran national team uniform.

Had things worked out differently, he could have been national side teammates with Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan, whose mother hails from El Salvador. Roldan considered at one point playing for El Salvador’s national team, given his extensive family there and how “it feels somewhat like home” after repeat visits with his parents.

But he stuck to playing for the USMNT and made his debut with the squad last summer.

“It was just an emotional decision,” Roldan said. “Obviously, the U.S. has given so much to me and my family and I felt like I owed them quite a bit. I’m pretty happy with my decision.”

Roldan and Mayen are seven years apart in age and never crossed paths in California despite growing up about 45 minutes from each other. While Mayen and Santa Tecla appeared to catch the Sounders off guard in El Salvador, Roldan insists that won’t happen again.

“There aren’t any excuses,” he said. “We need to come back stronger than ever, get a clean sheet and score some goals.”