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With a baby due on Charlotte FC’s first home game, Sergio Ruiz knows his priorities

Charlotte FC’s first signed player, Sergio Ruiz, took the pitch at Bank of America Stadium this week for his first training session with the club. The moment was a long time coming; it’s been 18 months since he inked his contract with the Major League Soccer expansion team, but the “firsts” are just getting started for Ruiz.

The Spanish central midfielder said that he and his wife are expecting their first child on or around the same day that Charlotte FC is slated to play its home-opening match March 5. Ruiz said he plans to play in the game, then go meet his baby, if fate allows.

Make no mistake, however, about how Ruiz is prioritizing his growing family.

“I think that it’s the most important thing in my life,” he said Tuesday.

Soccer could be considered a close second, especially since Ruiz said that he never wavered in his commitment to joining the team despite the long waiting period prior to his arrival. He signed with Charlotte FC in July 2020, a week before the league announced the team’s inaugural season would be pushed back a year to 2022 due to the pandemic. That was before the club officially had a name.

“I’m really proud to be here,” Ruiz said Tuesday via Zoom, a product of continued pandemic protocols. “It’s been a long time since I signed my contract with Charlotte and I had to wait a long time to be here, but right now, I’m very happy to be with my teammates, with the head coach.”

The staff appears equally as thrilled. Head coach Miguel Ángel Ramírez greeted Ruiz with an exuberant hug, which included multiple fist pumps, upon Ruiz walking out to the field for training Monday. Ruiz spent September 2020 through November of last year playing for Spanish Second Division team Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, which is also Ramírez’s hometown.

Ruiz said that the two were able to connect three or four times prior to preseason in Las Palmas, and that he thinks highly of the coach who’s expected to bring an exciting and engaging brand of soccer to the city and league.

Ramírez also threw his full support behind Ruiz when the player announced in November that he would take time away from soccer to return to his family in Northern Spain and focus on his mental health. Ruiz missed eight matches between September and October in Las Palmas due to a minor fracture in his right foot. He said that the injury and his anxiety made the last few months difficult.

“But right now, I am good,” Ruiz said. “I am strong. I am looking forward to starting the season.”

“I feel proud. Really, really proud to be here,” he reiterated.

Over the last two seasons, Ruiz made more than 40 appearances for Las Palmas, where he played on loan after signing with Charlotte. He scored five goals and added six assists during the 2020-21 season for the club, which finished ninth (of 22 teams) in the league standings that season.

Charlotte FC’s staff believes Ruiz will be an effective asset in the core group they’ve built. He’s been described as a dynamic midfielder with technical skills who also contributes a steady and positive attitude.

Ruiz has also already demonstrated his commitment to the club. It was reported that Charlotte FC garnered, and rejected, multiple offers to send him elsewhere before the season. A report by MLSsoccer.com indicated that Charlotte received at least one bid for Ruiz from a team in La Liga, Spain’s top division. Ruiz said his focus has remained on Charlotte.

“I thought it was time to come here to change my scenery and to start a new project,” he said in Spanish. “I knew that this would be good for me on a personal level. We will see in the future if I stay here or if I go to Spain, but right now, I’m thinking about staying here and enjoying (Charlotte).”

Ruiz waited out a snowstorm in the Southeast that moved Charlotte FC’s preseason plans from Clemson to its home stadium, and a slow visa process that meant he wasn’t able to start with the team for its first week of training. But Ruiz said he considered the rare snow a good omen for the inaugural season. He’s looking forward to more cosmically-timed events.

“It’s crazy because we are new here in the city, and also in one month, I will be a father,” he said. “I will play our first match here.”

Ruiz, 27, has so far comfortably rolled with schedule changes through a pandemic, snowstorm and international move. The next few months could bring more chaos as he juggles fatherhood and a career transition, but the synchronicity in those happenings might be a good omen, too.

“It will be crazy and amazing,” he said.