CARSON, Calif. – Father's Day means the world to Ariel Lassiter, an LA Galaxy II attacker with superstar potential and a most enviable of bloodlines.
He's the son of former US national-teamer and MLS star Roy Lassiter, of course, and his aim is to live up to the standard his father established over a decade in Costa Rica, Italy and with four Major League Soccer teams.
Some believe he's destined to build greatly upon that legacy. Perhaps Roy will soon be known as Ariel's father, rather than the other way around.
“Everything that I am, the player that I am, is because of him, all the work that we've done together since I was little,” said Ariel, a 20-year-old winger/forward who leads the Galaxy's USL-based reserve team with six goals in 10 games, plus another tally in the US Open Cup. “As soon as I could walk, he tells me, I had a ball in my hand. I thank God for allowing me to have a person like that in my life.”
Roy was MLS' deadliest striker when the league kicked off in 1996, scoring 27 goals in 30 games to lead the Tampa Bay Mutiny to the first-ever Supporters' Shield – retroactively; the honor wouldn't exist for three more years – and set a record for hitting the net that's been equaled twice but never surpassed.
He netted 18 more in both 1998 and 1999 for D.C. United, winning an MLS Cup title in '99, and also spent time with the Miami Fusion and Kansas City Wizards. He's tied for 10th on MLS’ all-time goals list, with 88 (plus 13 more in the playoffs), and he scored four goals in 30 caps over nine years with the US national team.
“Roy was all about scoring goals. He was all business,” said Galaxy II head coach Curt Onalfo, Lassiter's teammate those two seasons with D.C. “He knew what his job was, and he spent a ton of time in front of the goal, and he was a lethal goalscorer.
“If you compare the two, Ari, in my mind, has all the signs of the same ability to score goals like his father did. But I think Ari can be more of a complete player. Ari has the potential to have even more than what his father had, and his father was an excellent player.”
Roy says Onalfo is “spot on.”
“I wasn't the greatest in the [defensive] third or the middle third of the field. My game started in the final third,” he said. “When that ball got to the final third, I was going to do everything in my power to be in the right spot to put the ball in the net and help my team win.
“But Ariel is an all-around player. He knows how to shoot, he knows how to pass, he knows how to dribble, he knows where to be to score goals, and this isn't just now. Ariel's been doing this for years. And I coached him all the way up to going to college, so I know. He's a more technical player and more savvy than I was.”
Onalfo raves about Ariel's speed, technique and growing understanding of the game, notes that he's “chiseled out of stone, [with] a body like Cristiano Ronaldo's” and that “when you watch him play soccer, he's like a Ferrari.”
“He's clinical in front of the goal, just like his dad was,” Onalfo said. “He's got all the tools to make it to a really high level. ... All the signs are there. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, because he's got a long way to go, but in my mind, he has an amazingly bright future.”
Onalfo has known Ariel since he was 3 and “buzzing around with the other kids” at D.C. United training sessions and in the locker room.
“I joke with Ari all the time,” Onalfo said. “'I used to kick your dad in training because I couldn't keep up with him he's so dang fast. He's got bruises all over his shins.'”
Ariel was 8 during his father's final MLS season, but he recalls watching him play, mostly in 2001-02 with Kansas City and the return to D.C. United. What does he remember most?
“The goals. Definitely, the goals,” he said. “And the way he carried himself on and off the field. The way that he was as a player. I try to implement those things in my game as well. And I always try to listen to him because he's been there, he's done that. I think he's reached the pinnacle of professional soccer, so who better to listen to than somebody who's actually been through it.”
Roy has guided Ariel's progress as a player throughout his youth, in recent years with San Diego's Albion SC, which lured both Lassiters from Texas when Ariel was 13. Roy served as the club's director of advancement from 2009 until joining Arsenal FC earlier this year.
“I've always taught Ariel that you can't cheat anything on the game, or the game will cheat you later on,” Roy said. “That's the one thing I've always stayed true to is train very hard. Just working extra, putting in extra touches, the extra hours, because I was going to get them back at some point in a game, in a moment, that was going to help me elevate my game.
“I've always taught Ariel that, and, granted, there's a lot on his shoulders, too. He has to want it. He has to have that desire. I can only help him through my experience, and the rest has to come from him.”
Ariel was born in Costa Rica – Roy spent four seasons there before MLS' debut, with Turrialba, Carmelita and Alajuelense, and he met and married a local woman – and followed his father on a nomadic journey common to soccer players and coaches. The family moved to Temecula, in Riverside County east of Los Angeles, when they joined Albion SC.
He knew what he wanted to do – being a professional soccer player has been the goal all along – but after he graduated from Great Oak High School in Temecula, Roy insisted he “try the college environment,” and so he spent the 2013 season at Cal Poly, in San Luis Obispo on California's Central Coast, where he was the Mustangs' No. 2 scorer. That was that.
Ariel signed with agent Dan Segal, who sent a highlight film to Swedish top-tier club Helsingborg, which brought him in for a trial and were impressed but needed veterans more than youngsters. So he signed last summer with Gothenberg-based second-division side GAIS and spent a season with the club, advancing his tactical acumen and seeing regular playing time, before bolting for a contract with the Galaxy's reserve team last December.
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“The reason we chose the Galaxy over any other club, over staying with GAIS, is because you have Curt Onalfo, you have Bruce Arena, and you have LA Galaxy,” said Roy, who played one season at D.C. United and a handful of US national team appearances for Arena. “LA Galaxy is a big name, and it's putting Ariel in front of people that are going to help him thrust to that next level, to get to Major League Soccer even faster. It came down to exposure. That's what it really came down to.”
Said Ariel: “It's the Galaxy. They're all about winning, and that's all I'm about.”
He's also been in a tug-of-war of sorts between the US and Costa Rican under-23 national teams, playing for both this year ahead of qualifying for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He's made no decision about his senior career, but for the time being he's a Tico.
“It's going [to the country] who wants you the most,” Roy said. “And the US is great, but when you have Paulo Wanchope, the coach of [Costa Rica's] senior national team, saying that Ariel is going to be Costa Rica's next star, you kind of wonder. You go, 'Wow.' You’re talking Paulo Wanchope – he's the most decorated Costa Rican player, and he's the head coach, and head coach of the U-23s, as well.”
Ariel says that Costa Rica is “where I was born, so that's my country.”
“It's just making the right decision on where I can grow, what's the best thing for me as a soccer player,” he added. “I don't think I fully have come to a decision yet, but right now I am with the Costa Rica national team, and they're looking to keep me involved in their plans.”
Ultimately, Ariel wants to follow in his father's footsteps.
“I have a high standard to live up to,” he said. “If people say something about me, it's 'son of Roy Lassiter.' I have a big name, but, hopefully, I can reach the levels that he was at. If I can get anywhere close to the level that he was at, I think I'd be a pretty good player.”
