Juninho’s homecoming started long before his return to StubHub Center
Is it possible to become homesick for a place that’s not your home?
Juninho thinks so.
A year ago, the Brazilian midfielder left the Galaxy for Tijuana in Mexico’s Liga MX, a move that marked a step up in class, a doubling of his salary and a chance to grow as a player.
There was just one problem: He never got to play.
So after starting nine games in two seasons with the Xolos, Juninho asked for a transfer back to MLS, where he was snapped up by the Chicago Fire with the No. 2 pick in last December’s allocation draft.
And 18 months after playing his last MLS game in the StubHub Center, Juninho returned with the Fire on Saturday.
“It was my decision to go,” Juninho said last week. “It was my decision to be back again.”
Both decisions, he said, where good ones.
“I was not unhappy there,” he said of Mexico. “It was my choice to go to a league where I could learn a lot more.”
The biggest lesson, though, was that he missed MLS.
“I’m very happy to be where I know everything. And where I speak the language,” he said by phone from Chicago. “So I feel much better than I did in Tijuana.”
Juninho, 28, learned English during six seasons with the Galaxy, where he averaged 30 starts a year and grew from a wide-eyed 21-year-old rookie into a key figure and fan favorite on a team that won three MLS championships.
Success has a price, though and Juninho’s left him in a line for a raise from the $350,000 he earned in 2015, making his contract difficult to fit under the MLS salary cap. He was also feeling underappreciated, with the additions of Steven Gerrard and Giovani dos Santos overshadowing his contributions.
“Juninho wants to be recognized, that’s for sure,” his agent, Ricardo Silveira said at the time.
The greener grass on the other side of the border turned out to mostly weeds, though, so a year after leaving the U.S., Juninho asked Tijuana to send him back.
But if the decision to come home was his, where he landed was out of his control.
The Galaxy, looking to bolster their midfield last winter, would have been his first choice. But because the team sold him to Tijuana, Juninho had to go through the allocation progress to return and the Galaxy would have had to trade up to get him.
“To be honest, I would have liked to go where I felt comfortable. I know everything in L.A.,” he said. “It could have been a good move.”
Chicago proved more aggressive, though, sending allocation money, a second-round pick in the SuperDraft and the No. 3 spot in the allocation ranking order to Minnesota in exchange for the rights to Juninho last December.
A month later the Galaxy signed Portugal’s Joao Pedro as their holding midfielder.
“Houston and Columbus really wanted him as well. So there was no way he was going to go down to L.A.,” said Silveira, adding that his client’s $700,000 base salary marks a pay cut from what he got in Tijuana.
“He said ‘OK, I will make less money. But I want to be back in MLS.’”
Then three games into his MLS encore, Juninho found himself overshadowed once again, this time by German World Cup star Bastian Schweinsteiger, who joined the Fire last month.
However Schweinsteiger has smartly gone out of his way to tout Juninho’s contributions.
“It helps a lot,” he said “to have players like Juninho.”
Who says you can’t go home again?
“So far, so good,” Juninho said of his move to Chicago. “I’m getting used to it.”
Twitter: kbaxter11
