{"id":319360,"date":"2026-06-25T13:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/319360\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T13:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:35:07","slug":"from-haiti-to-miami-to-the-world-cup-one-players-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/319360\/","title":{"rendered":"From Haiti to Miami to the World Cup: one player\u2019s story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TORONTO,<\/p>\n

Ricardo Ad\u00e9 #4 of Haiti dribbles the ball during an International Friendly against Iceland on March 31, 2026, in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Vaughn Ridley<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

I came here with a plan, my mother\u2019s prayers and one pair of cleats. The city was loud and hot and nothing like I expected. For the first few months I didn\u2019t say much. On the field I just played and let my game speak for me.<\/p>\n

By then, soccer had already taken me from Haiti to Thailand to Miami. I didn\u2019t know what came next. But the Haitian community found me before I found them. They weren\u2019t my family, but they made themselves my people. The food, the music, the energy \u2014 it pulled me in. A few months after I arrived, a man watched me play in a park on a Tuesday afternoon and said: \u201cYou\u2019re talented, you\u2019re wasting it, come back Saturday.\u201d That was my recruitment.<\/p>\n

He already knew I could play. He just gave me somewhere to play. That\u2019s the part people miss. Roberto Sacca, who was CEO of Miami United, and my coach Claudio Frean \u2014 men who had earned real credibility in that city \u2014 spent some of it on me. They vouched for me when I didn\u2019t have enough English to describe myself. They showed up for me when I had no family in the stands. They debated my potential like their own future was riding on it.<\/p>\n

The matriarchs who fed the team. The men and women who had left Haiti<\/a> with nothing and rebuilt their whole lives from scratch, learned a new language and still found time to stand on a sideline and cheer. The grandmothers who prayed like it was Sunday mass \u2014 and I think for them, it was.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s a version of my life where I make it without Miami. I can\u2019t imagine it.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m here. FIFA World Cup 2026. I still don\u2019t have the right words for it, and I speak four languages. My mother is in the stands and I feel the same thing I felt as a kid on a field in Haiti \u2014 just the game and the love of it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve played across several countries, and now I call Ecuador home, playing as a defender for L.D.U. Quito. I stand in stadiums in South America and feel the crowd and think: My people are here, too.<\/p>\n

The Haitian diaspora. Everywhere. Montreal, Boston, New York and Miami and every city on earth. The ones who left by choice. The ones who had no choice. I see them holding a flag that carries so much feeling, so much history. I play for them every time.<\/p>\n

This moment is for anyone who just needed one community, one city, one man in a park to say: I see you. Because of them I get to stand in the biggest stadiums in the sport and say, we made it. This is for the diaspora. It was always for the diaspora.<\/p>\n

For the second time in 52 years, our small country is here.<\/p>\n

Merci, Haiti. Merci, Miami. Merci \u00e0 tous.<\/p>\n

Ricardo Ad\u00e9 is co-captain for the Haiti National Team FIFA World Cup 2026 and is a center back for Ecuador\u2019s LDU Quito.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricardo Ad\u00e9 #4 of Haiti dribbles the ball during an International Friendly against Iceland on March 31, 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-319360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}