Finding a fresh start with Valour FC

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This article was published 14/07/2021 (1746 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What on earth is Andrew Jean-Baptiste doing playing professional soccer in Winnipeg?

That’s not a knock on Valour FC, or the Canadian Premier League for that matter, but you just don’t see many Americans itching to play the beautiful game north of the border at this level.

Jean-Baptiste was born to Haitian parents and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., but even if he grew up on Valour Road, you’d still have to question what he’s doing here, as even an untrained eye could tell that he’s the best centre-back in the league.

The former Major League Soccer defender has his reasons for being here. The 29-year-old, who’s in his second season with Valour and one of the main reasons they sit atop the CPL table with a 4-0-1 record, just hasn’t been comfortable sharing them — until now.

“It’s something I’ve been meaning to talk about for some time, but I’ve always held back because I’m still in my career,” Jean-Baptiste told the Free Press on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t want me being vocal to damage my reputation even more. That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t mentioned it before.”

Jean-Baptiste was drafted 8th overall by the Portland Timbers in the 2012 MLS SuperDraft. He made 31 appearances (26 starts) for the club, and had some success, most notably scoring a header in stoppage time to give Portland a 2-1 victory over LA Galaxy on July 13, 2013. But after two seasons with the Timbers, they shipped him off to now-defunct Chivas USA where he’d only play 10 games as he was hampered with injuries. Jean-Baptiste then signed with the New York Red Bulls at the beginning of 2015, but couldn’t replicate the success he had in Portland as he was assigned to New York’s reserve team.

Today, he looks every bit like an MLS-calibre defender, and Valour head coach Rob Gale would be the first person to tell you so. Jean-Baptiste has helped Valour to four clean sheets in five matches, but he hasn’t gotten a call from the top North American league since. He had stops in Spain, Malaysia, and Sweden before landing with Valour in 2020.

“When I left the MLS, I had a stigma about me… For the most part, the soccer world is a small world, so you know, coaches talk,” he said.

Jean-Baptiste, one of Valour’s co-captains, isn’t a shy guy. He’s a vocal leader, on and off the field, and is known to be one of the more outgoing personalities in the locker room, talking with veterans, rookies and even the players who don’t fully speak english. Valour adores him for it, but the feelings were much different in his early MLS days. There was a time back then when a good teammate and friend of his warned him that his talkative ways were rubbing some people the wrong way.

“He didn’t say who had these feelings, but he told me ‘Come in here, get your boots on, and show up on the field before anybody else.’ That’s how I was told to go about my days… To hear something like that put me back, but ultimately, that’s what I started trying to do,” said Jean-Baptiste.

“But with that, and then with not playing, it came off as I had an attitude or something. It’s just like, I didn’t have an attitude, I’m just trying not to be too loud anymore because apparently that’s a problem for some people.”

From there, Jean-Baptiste had to deal with a pair of assistant coaches who bullied him. Jean-Baptiste said he was taught at an early age to stand up to bullies, and he did, but there’s consequences when that bully is your coach and they field calls from other teams asking about the type of player you are. Jean-Baptiste believes those assistants seriously damaged his career.

“I just didn’t understand what they were coming at me for. Why am I getting picked on for my clothes? Why am I getting picked on for wanting to play for the national team one day? One offseason, I did an interview about hoping to play for the Haitian men’s national team and when I came back, they pulled me to the side, him and the other assistant coach, and ridiculed me,” he said.

“They made it sound like I’d never get there. I didn’t understand that. That type of environment is so detrimental to your mental health.”

Jean-Baptiste has made a dozen appearances for Haiti’s senior men’s squad and was named to its 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup team.

Jean-Baptiste said he also had the severity of his injuries questioned. He felt he always had to rush back onto the pitch before he was ready and he ultimately paid for it as it led to him needing a sports hernia surgery in 2014 while with Chivas. Once he recovered and ended up with the Red Bulls, he was on the massage table when a physiotherapist whispered in his ear that he heard Jean-Baptiste had failed a drug test, which wasn’t true.

“Apparently that was something that floated around my name for four years. For four years, that was said about me and I didn’t know it until then,” he said.

“It’s one of those things, if people are saying that about me, I can only imagine what else they’re saying.”

Jean-Baptiste admits he wasn’t a saint. He’s not making excuses as he knows there are things that he could’ve done differently, but everything that happened led to him wanting to get out of America for a fresh start.

After some time overseas, he wanted to play somewhere a little closer to home where he could have some job security and an opportunity to make a big impact. Valour checked all the boxes.

“Coming over here and chatting with (assistant coach) Damian (Rocke) and Rob (Gale), it just felt so welcoming,” Jean-Baptiste said. “You want to go somewhere where you’re not just another player, you’re wanted on that team.”

The pandemic has made this season less than ideal as Valour, and the other seven CPL clubs, are living in a bubble and playing their first eight matches at IG Field before returning to their home markets, but living out of a hotel hasn’t been so bad as Jean-Baptiste has found the team culture that he’s been looking for.

“With me being here, I’m more than comfortable. I’m happy,” he said.

“This is probably the happiest I’ve been in quite some time so that’s why I find it so hard to want to leave a place where I’m in so much of a better place mentally.”

If he keeps playing the way he’s playing, Jean-Baptiste, who already has two goals this season, will find himself in the MVP conversations. While that would certainly open the door for him to take his talents to a higher level of competition, he’s not exactly in a rush to leave the Manitoba capital.

“If a big enough opportunity comes, I think the fans, the staff and all my friends and family would understand if I ever left, but it’d have to be one pretty big opportunity.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31