Pro soccer a dream come true for Berry

The former Torero forward is enjoying his rookie season with Columbus Crew SC, including a temporary return to San Diego on loan with Loyal SC

Eric Boose / Sports Editor

Before Miguel Berry even played his first game for the Toreros, he knew that he was going to be a professional soccer player. It had been his dream since he was a young kid growing up in Barcelona, Spain, playing soccer to copy his older brother, as younger brothers do. By the time he arrived at the University of San Diego, it was more than a dream.

“I realized it’s what I really want to do, and I’m good enough for it, and my senior year rolled around and physically I became even with the guys who were way ahead of me, and I didn’t look back since then,” Berry said. “I knew from freshman year in college that I was going to go pro, one way or the other.”

By the end of Berry’s senior year at USD, other people knew it too. And they were right. In January, Columbus Crew SC picked Berry seventh overall in the Major League Soccer Draft — the earliest a Torero has ever been selected.

It was the cap to a tremendous season for Berry, who scored 17 goals in 18 games — tied for the most in the nation during the regular season — and assisted eight more to help the Toreros to 12 wins, earning West Coast Conference Player of the Year honors as a result. Despite Berry’s impressive contribution, the Toreros fell just short of earning spot in the playoffs.

“At that point, I felt like everything I had done, all the extra training I had done, playing in the summers, not going on vacation ever — it has paid off,” Berry said. “But, as a team when you don’t make the tournament, even though I thought we were wronged to not make the tournament, it’s frustrating, especially to not make it after four years of pouring your heart and soul into the program.”

Regardless, the Toreros’ star had earned himself plenty of attention from the pros, with multiple MLS teams asking USD men’s soccer head coach Brian Quinn about the forward. 

“There was a lot of interest in him, it wasn’t a case where he was an unknown, it was more a case of when people got to watch his highlights and his videotape people were impressed,” Quinn said. “It was just a matter of explaining to coaches that he is a kind of high-end character kid and he’s going to get better and better.”

By Jan. 7, draft day, the Los Angeles Galaxy, Los Angeles FC, and New England Revolution had all expressed interest in Berry, along with Columbus Crew. 

“Draft morning, I woke up at 7 a.m. thinking, ‘eh, I’m up early enough,’ and I had about 15 missed text messages and calls from my agent and other people about teams that were interested in me,” Berry said. “It was really last minute, I didn’t know where I was going to end up, and around pick three or four I got a text that it was going to be Columbus at seven.”

But there was a time when Berry did not think that he would come near professional soccer, let alone being a top-ten pick in the draft. Berry moved from Barcelona to Poway, California when he was eight years old, his love of soccer already well-founded. He kept playing, but by his first year at Poway High School, his teammates and competitors had hit growth spurts, and he had not.

“I went through a couple rough years in the U.S. where I was small, sort of underdeveloped physically, and I was having a tough time and I thought, ‘you know, I’ll use soccer to get into college somewhere, get a good education.,’” Berry said. “I definitely had some up and down times, for sure.”

Eventually Berry hit his growth spurt as well, and by his senior year of high school he had drawn even with and even surpassed some of his teammates and rivals. Part of that development came thanks to Berry’s love for the game, which helped him through tough times off the field.

“My mom got cancer when I was 15, 16, and it was stressful on the family, and for me, the thing I found that really made me happy was playing,” Berry said. “You talk about times like that when you need to do something with your time, productive, to get away from it, and that was always soccer. I would go out on my own and all of the sudden I was training way more on my own, just because I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” 

Berry’s work ethic and development earned him attention from a handful of universities by the end of his high school career, but no team had expressed more faith in him than the University of San Diego, so he became a Torero. Unlike high school, Berry got his footing early in his college career, scoring in his first game en route to tallying eight in his first season. 

“In the first year, you don’t put a lot of pressure on the freshmen coming in, and you kind of let them find their way because in the soccer season there is a lot going on because you’re in a new environment, you’re getting used to classes, there is a lot going on in your whole life,” Quinn said. “Miguel came in and it was pleasing that he started off his freshman year well, and I think his second year went reasonably well, and then in the last two years he was really, really good.”

As Quinn mentioned, Berry only got better over his four years at USD, with the striker’s work ethic leading to his breakout senior season. 

“Miguel is a player that is always, always striving to improve different parts of his game,” Quinn said. “A lot of the credit goes to him because he participated in leagues in the offseason and then we would come back and he was always looking for more information, more training, and how he can improve his overall game within the team.”

Now a professional, Berry has plenty of room for improvement, and quite the selection of people to learn from. In Columbus, Berry has the opportunity to practice alongside veterans of the United States Men’s National Team, including prolific striker Gyasi Zardes, whose experience includes scoring a game winner at the 2016 Copa America tournament. 

“There are guys all over the field you can learn from — people who have played in World Cups, people say he’s the best American player, Darlington Nagbe, guys who have played in big tournaments, in the Champions League in Europe — so, I’m incredibly fortunate,” Berry said. “To single out one, if I had to pick, would be Gyasi, but there are so many other guys you can throw in that mix.”

But Berry is not yet at the level to challenge Zardes for a starting role, and has returned to San Diego to get professional experience under his belt, finishing out the 2020 season with San Diego Loyal SC in the USL Championship. However, playing at a level below MLS has not deprived Berry of opportunities to get better. In joining the Loyal, he has swapped one great American forward for another as his mentor. San Diego is coached by one of the best American soccer players of all time, Landon Donovan.

“I am so lucky, he has been incredible with me,” Berry said. “He technically didn’t play my position but he played a very similar position so he knows so much and he has so much insight to share with me, and I love that.”

Berry joined Donovan’s team in late August and immediately got a spot in the starting lineup, a transition that required him to adjust after an extended time without playing in a competitive game. Berry’s final college game was last November, and his first game as a professional was in August. That time away from the game was made worse by the two-and-a-half-month-long break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when Berry could not even practice with his teammates. But Berry found his feet quickly in San Diego, earning his first professional assist in only his second game, and scoring his first two professional goals in an impressive performance in Los Angeles.

“I have scored everywhere I’ve gone, and I knew it was coming,” Berry said. “It was funny because the ball came across in the first 25 seconds or whatever it was, and I could have celebrated before I kicked the ball. I had the utmost confidence it was going in. When it did, it was obviously a big relief for the team because we haven’t scored many goals and to go one-nil up inside one minute is a big thing for us.”

Thanks to Berry’s pair of goals, San Diego Loyal SC cruised past LA Galaxy II (the MLS club’s development team) 3-0 before facing off against Orange County SC in Miguel Berry’s return to Torero Stadium. The former Torero would have scored in the second half of that game as well, had his shot not been cleared off the line. 

“It was obviously a great feeling, I wish he hadn’t saved that one off the line, it would have been great to score, but it was great to win,” Berry said. “Obviously, a great feeling to win there, I’ve won a lot of games there, and that was a special one for the team because it really gives us hope for the playoffs. It’s incredible to see just how far this club has come from its infancy, and I’m incredibly proud to play here.”

The 2-0 win at Torero Stadium last week did indeed keep San Diego in the playoff picture in the USL Championship. Thanks to a gutsy win on the road against first-place Phoenix Rising FC, in which Berry assisted what turned out to be the winning goal, Loyal SC are in second place in their group. While that puts the team in a playoff spot for now, they will have to fight to stay there. The teams in third and fourth place have more games left to play than San Diego, so Loyal will have to do well enough in their remaining two games to hold off the challengers and remain in second place in order to earn a spot in the postseason. 

San Diego Loyal’s final games of the season — at LA Galaxy II at 7 p.m. on Sept. 23 and hosting Phoenix Rising FC at 5 p.m. on Sept. 30 — are closed to fans, but both will be broadcast on FOX 5 San Diego and streamed online through ESPN+.