Filed under: MLS, U.S. Men’s National Team, D.C. United
Andy Najar has never been a big fan of the press.
“When you’re a professional, you know that your job is to play but also you have other duties, and talking to the press is one of them. I’m starting to understand that more and more,” he told me last fall, toward the conclusion of his rookie of the year season with D.C. United.
He said this during a one-on-one interview at RFK Stadium, from which I had been covering soccer for various publications for a decade.
In all that time, I had never encountered a player more ill at ease while talking to a reporter, and that included high school and college kids, non-English speakers and even Mia Hamm.
Najar spent twice as much time looking down at his phone as he did looking at me.
There certainly are mitigating factors. He’s shy — especially when dealing with English speakers he doesn’t know — and he’s a 17-year-old from small-town Honduras for whom change has happened very fast.
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