The Washington Posts’ Steven Goff has another story on one of our rookies this year, a player from the Ivory Coast by way of Division II Dowling College in Long Island. Check out the full article – Kpene Takes a Roundabout Way to D.C.
Great quote from the article by Dowling Coach John DiRico:
DiRico saw that desire surface at halftime of the NCAA semifinals last fall. With Dowling trailing West Florida by two goals — its largest deficit of the season — Kpene made an emotional plea to his teammates. “It was in French or something, I don’t know, but he got his message across,” DiRico said. “He’s usually a pretty quiet guy, but he got everyone’s attention. The whole team was like, ‘Whoa, Guy’s not happy, is he?’ “
Interesting to me that United keeps finding these guys in the lower divisions, or obscure places.
They pick up Luciano Emilio from the Honduran League, Ricky Schramm from local G’town, Kpene (pronounced Ka-Penny) from Division II school, Bobby Boswell last year from Florida International, Christian Gomez the year before from Nueva Chicago in Argentina (not exactly a big club), Troy Perkins from the PDL and the University of Evansville, and Yinka Casal from the reserve team of EPL’s Fulham.