Miguel Ibarra had to leave home to start his professional soccer career. On Monday, he’ll announce that he’s coming home to end it, joining AV Alta FC, the USL League One team that will begin play in the Antelope Valley in March.
“I’m definitely happy to be back home,” he said. “I never thought that I would end up here and play my last years for AV, coming back home and being next to my family and dad and mom.”
Not next to them, but under the same roof. As part of the homecoming, Ibarra has moved back into his parents’ house for the first time since leaving the Antelope Valley to join Minnesota United in the NASL in 2012, the first stop in a 12-year career that saw him play for six teams in five leagues in two countries.
No player from the Antelope Valley has played more games for the U.S. national or scored more goals in MLS than Ibarra. But that’s largely because few players from the Antelope Valley have played professional soccer at all. And that’s something John Smelzer wants to change with AV Alta which, when it launches, will be the only professional team in any sport in the rapidly growing Antelope Valley, a community of 538,000 about an hour north of Los Angeles.
“As a community-based club, we plan to create a pathway to professional soccer for AV’s youth,” said Smelzer, a longtime sports and media executive who began his career on the 1994 World Cup organizing committee. “Identifying and developing young players is not just the business model, it’s the right thing to do.”
Ibarra’s presence is vital to creating that connection. He’s living proof you can go from the Antelope Valley to the national team and it’s why AV Alta set its sights on him two years ago, when the team was little more than a dream.
“When we’re preaching local, we’re appreciating the whole full circle with Miguel,” said Nehemias “Nini” Blanco, the team’s general manager. “That’s probably the best story to tell to the community. One of their own is coming back home.
“Miguel is a perfect signing, a perfect story.”
Read more: How a pro soccer team hopes to create a new identity in the Antelope Valley
Ibarra, 34, said he was thinking about retiring two years ago, after his first season in the USL League One with Charlotte. Two years earlier he had suited up for the Seattle Sounders in the MLS Cup; his career was going backward. But then he got a call from Panchito Ramírez, who had played for the same Antelope Valley youth…