Costa Rica and NWSL star Rocky Rodriguez on the complexities of her “American dream”

From her earliest childhood memories in San Jose, Costa Rica, Raquel “Rocky” Rodriguez was laser-focused on a career in soccer. Perhaps it was the impact of her father, Sivianni Rodriguez, who played for the Costa Rican national team and began coaching her almost as soon as she could walk. But in both her recollection and that of Sivianni and Rocky’s mother Grettel, it was the internal drive that fueled the dream.

“When I was a little girl, around 7 years old, fútbol was running through my veins,” Rodriguez said in the latest episode of My New Favorite Futbolista, a podcast collaboration between NBC Sports, Telemundo and On Her Turf introducing listeners to some of the most dynamic players in soccer and their stories off the pitch. “I was very passionate about fútbol. I would breathe fútbol.”

“I would say, ‘Of course, my love,’ but deep inside of me I didn’t believe her,” Gretel Rodriguez remembers. “I would still say, ‘Darling, you can dream as much as you want.’ I would tell her, ‘We’ll see what life brings us. And she told me, ‘No one will stop me from reaching what I want. No one, not even you.'”

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That passion would take Rocky to the Costa Rican national team, Penn State, and the NWSL. She would score Costa Rica’s first ever Women’s World Cup goal and be named Rookie of the Year with the Portland Thorns in 2016. Her three childhood goals, written on a sheet of paper – “To get a university scholarship in the United States to study through soccer, to play with the Costa Rica national team, and to play soccer professionally”  – would all come to fruition before she turned 23. But with those victories came the unique challenge of leaving family and making her