Rooting for the home team

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/03/2019 (2376 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Valour FC midfielder Nicolás Galvis was excited to see one of his childhood friends sign a deal earlier this month to play professionally in Winnipeg.

However, Galvis and his friend won’t be on the same team, nor will they even be playing the same sport.

Galvis, a 21-year-old who was born in Colombia but moved to St. Catharines, Ont. with his family when he was seven, grew up playing soccer with current Manitoba Moose defenceman Johnathan Kovacevic.

The Winnipeg Jets drafted Kovacevic, also 21, in the third round (74th overall) in the 2017 NHL draft and signed him to a two-year, entry-level contract earlier this month.

“We grew up playing soccer together from the age of 13 to 15,” Galvis said prior to Valour FC’s training session at Investors Group Field on Wednesday. “He was a defender and we were good friends. We’d always hang out. He was doing both — hockey and soccer. I’m glad he is where he is today. I’m glad he’s in Winnipeg, too.”

Kovacevic’s signing gives Galvis another reason to cheer for his favourite NHL team — the Winnipeg Jets. Galvis has been a longtime supporter of the Jets, despite not having any connection or real knowledge of Winnipeg prior to signing with Valour FC.

“I had a teacher in Grade 5 and he was a huge Jets fan,” Galvis said.

“He’d have posters all over the classroom. He’d tell us about the scores every day. I wasn’t a big hockey fan until then. And then all my friends liked the Jets, too.”

But Galvis isn’t in town to follow his favourite hockey team and join the Whiteout street parties.

He’s here to put himself back on the map for the Canadian senior team and for the opportunity to play in a new league on home soil.

Galvis, who’s spent the past three years playing professionally in Uruguay and Colombia, had a taste of the national team in 2017 when he was called up to the roster for a friendly game against Curaçao. Galvis didn’t see any action in the game, but it gave him an opportunity to meet and train alongside the biggest names in Canadian soccer, such as Alphonso Davies, who now plays for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich.

“It was just a great experience. It was obviously a totally different environment,” Galvis said.

“It’s an experience I learned from a lot. I’m not in the situation I want to be in with them. I want to play more and be called up way more than I was, but I was there and a lot of people can’t say that. I’m glad I had that.”

While Galvis is working hard to get back to the national team, he’s also working hard to help his Spanish-speaking Valour FC teammates become comfortable with their surroundings. Midfielder Diego Gutiérrez of Chile and defender Martín Arguiñarena, a Uruguay native, don’t speak any English.

To help them with their transition to playing and living in a new country with a language that is foreign to them, Galvis has taken it upon himself to help them out. Galvis grew up speaking Spanish in Colombia, and can relate to their situation.

“I feel for them. It’s so hard to not know a language and be yourself. When I (played pro in) Colombia and Uruguay, I mean, Spanish is my first language, but I moved to Canada so young that I didn’t know the slang and the proper way to speak Spanish,” Galvis said.

“So you couldn’t really be yourself. I consider myself me when I speak English. When I speak Spanish, I feel like I’m a little different because I don’t know the words for certain things. So I can feel for them because they can’t translate what they really want to say with their broken Spanish or their broken English. I really like helping them out and trying to get across what they’re trying to say.”

As for Galvis, he’s got no problem getting his message across on why he chose to sign with Valour FC.

“With the new league and experiences I can get here, I think it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31