From New Jersey to Madrid via Brazil, Atlético is next big step for USMNT’s Johnny Cardoso

SEVILLE, Spain — “I don’t sing very well,” Johnny Cardoso says. “I prefer to play football.” And with that, the United States midfielder, and new Atlético Madrid signing, starts laughing. “But I got up on a chair in front of everyone, and I started to sing, and I chose this song: Maroon 5, ‘Payphone.'” If his initiation there is anything like it was with the national team, at least he knows what he’s doing. Back then, it went pretty well; after all, he’d been practicing for years.

It was November 2020, and it was an unexpected choice, perhaps, but not a chance one; this was a track that connected Cardoso to home in Brazil, another time. And, he hoped, it would connect him here: a new time, a new place. There was something practical about it, too. “I’m at a payphone, trying to call home; all of my change, I spent on you.” There were many words Johnny didn’t know in English — many he still doesn’t — but these were words he did; words he had heard so often, that meant something. Sitting in the sunshine, recalling that moment and many more, he smiles.

“When I was in Porto Alegre, my dad would come and get me on the bus, this was the music we would listen to, so it was already in my head,” he tells ESPN, speaking Spanish, earlier this summer before his move from Real Betis to Atlético Madrid was completed.

The first time he heard the song, Johnny was a kid 200 miles from home, chasing a dream and, as he puts it, “living alone and facing a pressure someone that age shouldn’t live with.” Some days he thought he couldn’t do it and just wanted to go back, calling his parents in tears. They would come whenever they could, all the way from Criciúma, and help him through it. Now, here he was standing before the USMNT, his team, for the first time. Standing on a chair, singing the same song. “Where have the times gone? Yeah, I know it’s hard to remember the people we used to be.” He didn’t speak English, but he could sing this, and the team would understand.

This time, it will be different. It will when it comes to the track, at least. As for the rest of it, well, that should be easier, even after a frustrating summer with the USMNT. At club level, Atlético is a step up: a new beginning, a bigger club: more pressure, a different style of play. But they are convinced by him, working to convince Betis and the player to turn their backs on a deal that gave Tottenham Hotspur priority. This feels like the right move to him, too. especially with the biggest prize of all awaiting at the end of his debut season: playing at the FIFA World Cup, for the hosts.

Spain has been home for a year now and the language here is no barrier, his Spanish spoken softly, almost gently, the slightest hint of a lisp and Brazilian touch. Besides, if anything has defined Cardoso it is that each new step, each new challenge, is met. Even if it does mean standing on a chair and singing.

Start again? Okay, then. He’s done it before. Here’s Johnny.

If you’re curious about what connected the Brazilian named João Lucas de Souza Cardoso — who grew up in Santa Catarina state, developed as a player with Internacional of Porto Alegre, moved to Real Betis in Spain and doesn’t speak English — to the United States, well, he was too. So his parents showed him.

“I’m a boy who comes from a Brazilian family,” Johnny says. “My father and mother went to live in the U.S. I was born there [in Denville, N.J.] but left after just three months. It was the time of the attack on the Twin Towers: That was September 11, and I was born on September 20. But very soon, we went back to Brazil, and that’s where I grew up. My family was very into sport and my dream since I was small was football. My dad had been a goalkeeper, although not professionally. I played, like every kid in Brazil. I didn’t have memories [of the U.S.]. And then one day we went back and visited the house where I had lived.

“We went up to the house and knocked at the door and met the people living there now. If I remember right, they were a Mexican family. We took some pictures of the house, we went to the hospital where I was born. And my mom and dad started telling me stories about our life there. Those are very nice memories. They told me the things they had been through there, all about their life, the time spent in that house, and I really felt it.

“They work in ceramics now in Brazil but when they lived in the U.S., my dad delivered pizzas. He worked on building sites. They lived there for four years in all. My dad went first, then mom went to join him, looking for work as well. They had gone looking for a dream. It is somewhere they had always wanted to live, and the opportunity came up. They were there for four years in total. They went, came back to Brazil for a bit and then returned. And it was in that second spell that I was born.

“My dad started calling me Johnny and eventually everyone knew me as Johnny. It started as something fun, but it stuck. It’s weird for me now if anyone calls me João, and I don’t even react; ever since I was a kid, it was, ‘Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…’ I like that. It’s like my thing, a trademark, my identity and I’m happy with it.”

The obvious question remains, though: why? Why America? Why not Brazil? Johnny says he always knew he could play for the U.S. because he had been born there, but never thought he would. Never really thought about it at all in fact. And when the call came, it wasn’t really a case of making a choice, of agonizing over it; it was the logical next step. There was a connection, an opportunity.

“The first time was with the U23s, and from there I kept getting the chance,” he says. “I had no doubts, no decision to make. I didn’t have the opportunity with Brazil, I didn’t have anyone coming to talk to me. It was just natural. And every time I go, I love it more and try to be more part of it.

“The first time was hard. I was very, very nervous with the language, which I didn’t speak at all. I left [Criciúma] young and didn’t really have the chance to learn English with my mom and dad [at home]. I took classes in Porto Alegre and I’m still taking them now. But to really speak English you have to practice, you have to be surrounded by it. I try. Of course I try. I watch films in English. I listen to English in music. I love music in English.”

Which is where the story comes out, standing on a chair singing “Payphone.” “My dad always listened to U2, to Maroon 5. He has good taste.” Johnny laughs, then concedes: “It’s not the typical footballer taste.”

Music has also helped him with his English. “I learn more than doing classes,” he says. It’s not easy, but his efforts have not gone unnoticed by his teammates. “He’s a really good guy: He’s quiet but he always trains well,” U.S. teammate Luca de la Torre says, while Jack McGlynn adds, “He always has a smile on his face, trying to make friends with all the new faces here.”

Johnny recalls, “The first time I went, I couldn’t speak any [English] really, but I had a clear idea in my head: ‘I’m going to play football. [Even] If I can’t communicate with them off the pitch, on the pitch I will.’ And that was how it went. … There were players who speak Spanish and that helps a lot. They all really welcomed me.”

Then there’s USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino, who is from Argentina. “That helps a bit,” Johnny says. “But, honestly? It depends on me and my football. It’s not the language that will put me on the pitch to play. Him having Spanish can help me a bit, but my mentality is always on the pitch, trying to do my best, trying to improve technically, physically, mentality. I’m there to help my teammates. It’s about what I can offer on the pitch.”

It hasn’t been the best summer, he knows; illness and an ankle injury reduced Cardoso to just 11 minutes in the group stage of the Concacaf Gold Cup and not one after that as the hosts reached the final, where they lost to Mexico. This isn’t the way it was supposed to be; it is also not, he trusts, the way it will be.

But there is time, qualities that come from a combination of influences; there’s a thoughtfulness about the game that is immediately obvious too. At that first U.S. call-up, former coach Gregg Berhalter said he could “tell” Cardoso was Brazilian, and there was something in that, something in his development. He saw a hint of the street footballer in the midfielder, a toughness to go with the technique, a physical ability that set him apart. Some of it was natural, some of it taught. In Spain, there has been a “Europeanization” of his game, an expansion of it, an increasingly proactive role at Betis, versatility too.

“He’s just such a quality player,” McGlynn says. “He’s very talented; there’s nothing he lacks.” That is one of many reasons why Atlético coach Diego Simeone wanted him, opening the doors to the elite.

Cardoso looks to one of Brazil’s all-time great for inspiration, even if his own evolution took him to a deeper part of the pitch. “My idol was [2007 Ballon d’Or winner] Kaká,” Cardoso says. “I love him as a player and all the more so as a person. The way he speaks about life, his mentality, is very similar to mine, I think. Now I take inspiration from players who play in my position. [Sergio] Busquets, Rodri, Thiago.

“I started playing futsal at 7 then I changed to big pitches at 11, 12. That was an important point and it helped me a lot: the short game, the intensity, and then moving onto something more open. I started as a forward, and I ended up in a position that’s more defensive, but I think [having] the whole package is very positive: that you take things from things from a forward, the skills, the quality, and add other aspects.”

Betis had seen something in him, enough from his five years at Internacional to sign him in January 2024. The club’s sporting director Manu Fajardo tells ESPN: “Because of his physical capacity and his technical ability, he can break from those deeper positions and reach the opposition’s area. I see a balance in him, a player capable of performing in both phases of the game.”

Context is everything, Cardoso says: “In some moments I am more defensive, but I can also be a No. 8, a box-to-box midfielder who reaches the area and scores goals, too.”

The context? A European giant, aspiring to everything. A loyal, noisy fan base, 70,000 fans packing out the Metropolitano, as much a cause as a club. Like Champions League football every week.

For Simeone, he is the perfect pivot for the heart of the side, a man capable of protecting the defence and moving the midfield but also having the versatility to fulfil other roles. The Argentine coach has been asking for a No. 5 for a long time; now, at last, he has him. There is perhaps a touch of the Thiago about him, that combination of quiet efficiency and understated intelligence, plus the physicality to cover a lot of ground.

It is a role few know better than Mario Suárez, who played for Atlético for five years, including under Simeone, winning six titles and reaching a Champions League final.

“I think Johnny Cardoso is not just a good signing for Atlético Madrid, he’s a necessary one,” Suárez tells ESPN. “He’s good with the ball, he is strong in duels, wins a lot of balls, and presses very well, especially on the front foot, stepping forward to press — which is why I’m interested to see how he adapts to those phases when Atlético play in a lower block, which they like to do with Simeone, give that he’s more comfortable pressing forwards, into the other team’s space. In those phases he will have to hold his position more, and that may require some adaptation.”

“He’s a great signing who can bring a lot to Atlético, who also may help open the U.S. market. He’s young, he’s very dynamic, he’s good in the air, he has scored goals from set plays. He’s very complete.

“I think we’ll see him play a more defensive role than Rodrigo De Paul or Pablo Barrios. That said, if Atlético do transfer players, if De Paul goes, it could be that they also sign a more purely positional defensive midfielder as a No. 5, and Johnny plays a little more free.”

Nothing is guaranteed. It doesn’t always end well, Cardoso knows. It doesn’t always start well, either. In the U.S.’s pre-Gold Cup friendly against Turkey, it could hardly have gone worse; a bizarre mistake gifting a goal when, trying to bring the ball out from deep, he struck the ball against Arda Güler and it rebounded into his own net. The 2-1 loss, a third successive defeat for the USMNT, deepened doubts. For some, at least.

“These things can happen,” De la Torre said. “He has the personality to get the ball in difficult situations and make things happen. And yeah, I mean, the guy tackles him and it comes in off the post. It’s unlucky and it can happen, but of course he gives more to the team than just that mistake. I thought he played well.”

“Today was just a fluke, he’ll be fine,” Nathan Harriel added, while Pochettino, called it “part of his growth, part of learning.”

Johnny will learn; there is a quietness, almost a timidity in him as Cardoso talks, but there’s a toughness too. Fajardo calls him “polite, well-mannered … and resilient.”

“Johnny is a brave boy, if you think about it,” Berhalter said when Cardoso joined the senior USMNT in September 2022. “He doesn’t speak perfect English, he’s 19 years old, he’s had the farthest to travel to get here. But he’s still embracing everything and taking everything in stride. He’s a great person, a very good player.”

Brave. “I think it’s a word that could define me, yes,” Johnny says. “I’m very resilient, I’m not scared of things. And I remember that first time very clearly.”

There’s a smile. It was strange? “Yes,” he says. That’s one word for it. The first training session Cardoso ever had with the national team wasn’t with the national team at all; it was just him and the coaches in the rain. He had traveled from Brazil, leaving two days before to be certain he would get there, and arrived a day before anyone else. “None of the other players had got there,” he recalls. When they did, it was time to get up on that chair.

Confidence can take a while but, he says, “I think bravery is something you have inside you, but I also think it’s something you can work on. I always had the desire to learn. I always put an idea in my head: ‘I’m not the best now, but it’s work,’ you know? You have to be strong.” He could be quoting from the book of Simeone.

He had to find that bravery from an early age.

“I was 12 the first time I went to Inter,” he says. “It was 300 kilometers from home. I wasn’t allowed to live there yet because I was too young. That first year I would stay a week per month training with the team and then go home. It was a way of getting used to it, adapting, like an internship. But at the end of the year, the coach said ‘if you want to play the games, the tournaments, you have to be here all the time.’

“My mom and dad always supported me but a mother’s heart when her child leaves home at 13 … it’s very difficult and I was always very, very close to my family. That first year I had days when I called them up crying — ‘I want to go home,’ ‘I can’t take any more of this.’ The role of my mom and dad was the most important thing. However much their hearts said ‘come home,’ they knew this was my dream, and they would say, ‘No problem, we’ll come and spend the day with you there, we’ll be there, things will get better, it’ll be OK.’

“I lived in a house with maybe 25 players, aged between 13 and 20. It was madness. Imagine it: I get there at 13 and I’m in a room with five in these little beds. There are two bathrooms for 25 kids. Two women lived there who did the cleaning, prepared the food, as if they were the mothers. My grandad would go and be there with me a week, or my dad would come. To start with it was very difficult, but it’s an incredible experience, something totally new. You encounter lots of different realities, it’s an education, you learn.”

When asked if, of all those boys, if he was the one that got the furthest, Johnny pauses. He thinks for a bit, a mental list forming, faces and names. Some were only there for a few months, some are long gone. “I think so,” he says.

There is a universal truth, too easily overlooked: The worst player on the worst team you have ever seen is brilliant. There might be no profession in the world more competitive, where making it is so hard. Those that do have something special about them, and it’s not necessarily in their feet; more often it is in their mind. Listening to Johnny — calm, analytical, clear — you can hear it.

“There are lots of kids I played within the academy up to 17, 18, that were great players,” he says. “People I looked at and thought, ‘Wow, there’s no way they won’t make it.’ Players you think, he’s so good technically, physically he’s an animal.

“But what happened? Mentally they didn’t have it. That’s the hardest part: to be strong, to know how to handle it all, live with it.”

When USMNT captain Tyler Adams is asked what stands out about Cardoso, he says: “The way he trains every single day, the way that he brings his mentality every single day. … He’s going to be an important player.” The errors? All part of the process. As Pochettino says: “Now the most important thing is to quickly go to the next page.” Everything in Cardoso’s career says that too. Lessons were learned and still are, daily. The pressure, Johnny says, can be intense.

Just how intense comes up when he discusses what it was like to be in the middle of the swirl of rumours, what it is like to see your name occupy the sports pages and everything that comes with being the new hope with the national team, and a new club.

And yet, as he talks, a picture forms that says it is more than that, at once simpler and more complex; it is not just this club or that one, this moment or the next, which is perhaps why he deals with each step, the bad moments, so naturally: it is the whole thing. The life, not just the game. The mind, not just the play. And that is worked upon too.

“What I most try to work on is the mentality, closing my eyes to the bad things. And also … look, I wouldn’t say close your eyes to the good things. Who doesn’t like to hear nice things? But if you focus on that you won’t [get anywhere]. Sometimes if you keep looking when things are good and everything’s nice, if you keep going, keep going to the bottom you’re going to find a bad one and a bad one. … You’ll always find it, and it will finish you.

“So I don’t have Twitter, I try not to spend much time on social media. Look, of course I like to read nice things but maybe you read one, two … and then I try to get out of there because otherwise your head starts to say, ‘Now I’m going to have a look and see what they’re saying over here.’

“And there will always be bad things because in the end you can’t please everyone. That’s what happens with a lot of young people and it upsets them. It happened to me when I played my first game at Inter. I played, went off, picked up the phone to see what people had said, and it was the worst thing that I could have done.

“I have support from my mom and dad, always. But since I was 15, I’ve been working with a psychologist too. Because of everything really: living alone in Porto Alegre, living with a pressure that you shouldn’t have to live with at that age, reading things about you that are from another world, from people who have no head. … I learnt a lot with that. And I still have psychology sessions once a week. I also have my mom and dad here with me and my wife now.

From Denville, New Jersey, to Madrid, via Brazil and Seville.