Photo by Steven Flynn/USA TODAY Sports

 

By DAN KARELL

One of the biggest questions during the 2014 World Cup cycle was who would lock down the fullback positions in the U.S. Men’s National Team lineup.

Now in the four games since the World Cup in Brazil, there seems to be very little question of who will be the starting left back of the USMNT moving forward.

Club Tijuana’s Greg Garza has emerged as a starter for the USMNT, and Garza’s performances for the national team this fall have made him one of the first names on the team sheet for head coach Jurgen Klinsmann.

“I feel great,” Garza said of his recent run of form. “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for me from the very beginning and I want to just keep working to secure that spot.”

Having started each of the last three USMNT games, Garza has more than held his own against the likes of Ecuador, Honduras, and Colombia.

For his club, Garza has been seen bombing forward in the attack, delivering crosses from the left and combining well with teammates in midfield.But for the USMNT so far, we’ve seen Garza’s ability to defend at a high level, and have the tactical knowledge to know when to attack and sit back, especially when facing Colombia’s Juan Cuadrado and James Rodriguez on the wings last Friday.

“On a personal note, I think I was pretty solid,” Garza commented on his performance against Los Cafeteros. “It was pretty much a defensive game for the most part, but when we do sacrifice so much behind, we need to find a way to finish the chances that we do have.

“I think the game could have ended 3-1 us,” continued Garza, “but like I said, we did sacrifice a lot with defending and they had their players really finish off the game, those really special players like James (Rodriguez) and Cuadrado and Teofilo (Gutierrez) and all of those special players. I think that we had our chances and we had the talent within ourselves to finish the game, but we just really didn’t take those chances.”

One player that Garza has been able to model himself off of a little recently is the man who’s place in the lineup he’s taking: DaMarcus Beasley

Garza claimed that he has learned a lot just from spending time with Beasley in the national team camps as well as watching him play up close when he was at Puebla for the last two seasons. The 23-year-old Texas native even remembered back when he was a pre-teen watching Beasley when he was in Europe starting for PSV Eindhoven and Rangers.

“I think that having him as a mentor, as a guy that I looked up to as a really young player growing up when I was 12-13 years old when he was at PSV,” Garza said. “He’s been around at PSV and Man City and was actually in Mexico for a few years. It’s a wonderful guy to follow in his footsteps and use as a mentor to pick his brain a little bit.

“We played against each other, had some clashes against each other. Just to talk to him after the game a bit, he actually always used to get injured against our team, not from my tackles. We were on opposite ends of the field, but it’s a really good feeling to be with him. Before that, I would just talk to him after the games, just being fellow Americans in the Mexican league, but it’s good to talk to him in person now as well.”

Like Beasley, Garza’s career has taken him all across the world, both for club and country, although Garza admits that there have been plenty of highs and lows. He spent time as a teenager in the Sao Paulo youth academy before returning to Texas to play for the Dallas Texans, and then moving to Sporting Club de Portugal in Lisbon, where he spent a couple of years without earning a coveted professional contract.

Garza did finally sign with Portuguese side Estoril Praia in 2010 but barely played in his one season with the club. After parting ways with his agent, Traffic Sports, and considering leaving the game in 2011 after nearly four months without a club, Garza found a new home in Dec. 2011 in Tijuana.

Since joining Xolos, Garza has earned the praises of the clubs coaches and his teammates, and his impressive play in 2012 and 2013 with the club made it an easy choice to let fellow USMNT left back Edgar Castillo leave for Atlas and make Garza the regular starter for Liga MX matches.

“It’s had its ups and downs,” Garza said of his career paths. “I was caught in a little quicksand for a bit, but after getting out of that I felt great, got the opportunity to actually play, and that’s gotten me here. I think it’s been a long journey with some happy and unhappy notes in it, but right now is a happy moment.”

Garza flourishing in Mexico shouldn’t be a surprise, as the Liga MX style of play favors Garza’s tactical nous and technique on the ball. Like learning from Beasley, Garza credits playing with plenty of steady heads and veterans in the locker room for his growth on the field in the last 12 months.

“It’s a wonderful league to be in, to develop and get experience in. I’m a big guy about experience,” Garza said, echoing his comments about Beasley. “I love to follow experienced guys, so I think just being around older guys that have had amazing careers like Fernando Arce and Leandro Augusto at Xolos, although they aren’t there anymore, but there are guys that you can really follow in their footsteps.”

On the back of his rise with Tijuana and the USMNT, plenty are asking whether Garza could return to play for a club in Europe some day. And while he calls it a “dream,” it’s one he’s not preoccupied with at the moment.

“Right now I’m pretty happy in Mexico,” Garza said. “It’s always a dream for me to come back to Europe. I was here for four to four and a half years, but I’m just working my hardest right now. I’m happy to just be a professional and to be involved with the U.S. Men’s National Team. Whatever happens in the future, only God knows.”