Thiago Martins
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Thiago Martins (born September 4, 1976) is a Brazilian soccer player who currently plays striker for the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer.
Martins was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and came to the United States in 1999, ending up in Santa Barbara, California. However, he soon ran out of money and was forced to sleep on the beach. Fortuitously, he came upon a group of people playing soccer in a park and asked to join them. One of them took Martins into his home. He started taking classes at Santa Barbara City College, where he also played soccer, before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara. In his first season with the UCSB Soccer team, he only played in 11 games due to a foot injury, but still managed to score 6 goals. In his second season, he again scored 6 goals in 18 matches, and was named to the All-Big West Conference first team.
Martins left UCSB in 2001 to play for the defunct San Diego Flash of the A-League. After their demise at the end of the 2001 season, Martins joined the Minnesota Thunder, where he scored 2 goals in 11 appearances. Martins was released, and moved to the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, also of the A-League, where he hit his stride, scoring 8 goals in only 576 minutes over 8 games. Martins truly emerged in the 2003 season, during which he scored 22 goals and 7 assists in 25 games for the Riverhounds, and was named A-League MVP. After the end of the A-League season, Martins joined D.C. United, where he played in five games before the end of the season.
While training following the 2003 season, Martins tore his left ACL; after an extensive rehabilitation process, he tore the ACL again soon before returning to the team, and in the end missed all of United's 2004 season because of his injuries. After the season, Martins was selected 17th overall by C.D. Chivas USA in the 2004 MLS Expansion Draft. He scored the first goal in club history in its second match, a 3-3 tie with the San Jose Earthquakes. Martins scored two more goals the rest of the season.
Martins was traded to the MetroStars, with a partial allocation, for Ante Razov in January 2006. He played just one game for the re-branded Red Bull New York, before a trade to Colorado for Jean Philippe Peguero.
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