Portland Thorns FC Player Profile: Luz Saucedo

Nick Laham

An experienced defender with the Mexican National Team, with 106 caps, Luz "Charito" joins the Portland Thorns for the upcoming NWSL season.

In our continuation of the series introducing the new Portland Thorns players we would like to introduce you to one of Mexican National team allocated players. I would also like to give a shout out to Sheba for translating some of the materials I found, without her I would know next to nothing about Charito.

Brief History

Luz "Charito" Saucedo, her full name is Luz del Rosario Saucedo Soto, grew up with three brothers who loved soccer. Through their influence she began playing soccer for her elementary school on the boy's team because there were no girl's teams because girls didn't play organized soccer. Once she made it to middle school she was forced off the team because school officials thought she would be hurt by the boys.

Thankfully with the full support of her parents she continued her soccer education and eventually was called up to the U-20 Mexican National team.

Accolades

These were hard to find as she did not play college soccer so instead I will list the major tournaments she has played in:

2002 U-20 Women's World Cup (1 appearance)
2004 Olympics (1 appearance)
2011 Women's World Cup (2 starts and three appearances)

Thoughts

She is probably the biggest unknown on the roster as there is next to nothing on the internet and the only videos I could find are from a soccer camp she helped out at. Judging by some of the Getty images and who she is pictured defending I would say she is an outside back and that is about all I can say. Guess we will have to use the wait and see approach.