Shortly after Marky Delgado learned to walk, his father taught him how to kick a soccer ball. And Delgado took it from there, playing his first game for an age-group U.S. team when he was 16 and signing his first professional contract a few months later.
His passion for the game developed a bit more slowly, however, nurtured during long afternoons watching Mexican league games with his father in the living room of their Glendora home. As a result his boyhood idols wore the verde of the Mexican national team, not the red, white and blue of the U.