Juarez having fun on the run
‘You’re going to love this city,’ Mexican midfielder tells his wife
The first thing Efrain Juarez did in Vancouver was pretty fitting: he went for a run.
The Mexican, who says he’s a midfielder and whose team says he’s a midfielder but who has spent much of his career as a right back, arrived in Vancouver last weekend.
If you are a keen-eyed Whitecaps fan who was up and about downtown early last Sunday and you think you spotted the Whitecaps’ latest signing running past you, you probably did.
“It’s a two-hour time difference from Mexico City,” he says. “I was up early.”
And he didn’t care about the raging windstorm, either.
“I lived in Glasgow for two years. When you live in these kind of places, you get used to it,” he said with a smile.
For an hour and a half or so, Juarez got a first look at his new city and he loved what he saw. From the hotel where he’s living for now, he took a route that carried him around much of the downtown peninsula. He caught a glimpse of Coal Harbour, he said. He ended up running down around Yaletown, too.
It was a 6 a.m. run, with few people out and about.
When you go for a run while the city is just waking up, “you can see (the city) from a different view.”
“I called my wife and told her, ‘You must come as soon as possible, you’re going to love this city.’ “
Juarez turns 30 in February. Quality of life is an important thing for him now; when he was young, what a city offered might not have been so important to him.
But now, “it’s a plus, the city,” he says.
He had never been to Vancouver before, but he had been to Canada — to Toronto and Montreal to play in the Under-20 World Cup in 2007, and also once to Victoria on a cruise with his parents — and he has friends who live here already.
Discovering that it wasn’t snowing in Vancouver like in the rest of the country was a rather pleasant surprise.
After five years in Monterrey, a city he said he loves, he was ready for something new.
“I have two or three friends who live here, and they told me ‘Come on mate, it’s a huge opportunity. It’s an amazing city.’ “
He’s here to win. While most players say that, Juarez points to his career: “All the teams I’ve been to, I’ve won something. I don’t want to leave here without winning.”
He hates losing, he says, even at video games.
It’s a statement about what he sees in Carl Robinson’s plans.
“I am in an age of my life, I want to challenge myself again,” he says, with a firm honesty. “I came to the MLS, to a club like this … it’s a huge opportunity to challenge myself.”
“The level is higher every year … I’ve followed the league for a long time.”
After just a few days of training, he said he can see how hard his teammates are working.
Hard-working describes his own personality, he says.
While his parents — he grew up in Mexico City, which he says he now finds too big — taught him to leave the house every day with a smile, they also taught him about the importance of hard work.
His father runs his own coffee business and he and his dad are also partners in a few investments, including several gas stations. His mother focused on making home a great place for her son.
That belief in doing everything as well as he can hits his own home now: he and his wife have a young son.
So while he notes that while he was born with a soccer ball under his arm, having to provide for his young family motivates him to keep getting stuck in at training and in games and also to think about where he’s plying his trade.
He’s signed a two-year contract with the Whitecaps. And Juarez isn’t daunted by the shift in position. He really can be a box-to-box midfielder, he insists.
“I want to put my experience to the service of the team.”