By Jonah Freedman, SI.com

Galindo defected from Cuba -- where he earned around $10 a day as an amateur -- during the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Scott Bales/Icon SMI

The team had just lost to Costa Rica in the '05 Gold Cup, and it was now or never. Once he quietly left the hotel, he climbed on the first bus he saw. Terrified, he rode it to the end of the line and was able to convince the bus driver to call the only person in Seattle he knew: Alex Zahajko, a high-school Spanish teacher who, as a volunteer for the Gold Cup, was assigned as a translator to the Cuban national team.

"One guy from the team had asked me where a good place to go shopping was," Zahajko recalls. "I gave him my cell number and told him to call me if he needed any more help. I didn't think anything of it. Six hours later, I got a random call from a bus driver. She was a little rude and said, 'There's this Spanish-speaking guy in a red track suit on my bus and I don't understand him.' I asked him if he was lost and he kept repeating, 'No, I want to stay.' That's when I realized it was a big deal."

Galindo was granted political asylum, and stayed at Zahajko's house for five months. Little did he know that his host (and close friend to this day) played in an adult league with Adrian Hanauer, majority owner of the Seattle Sounders of the United Soccer Leagues (one rung below MLS). Galindo soon found himself training with the Sounders, and he ended up cracking the roster that September in the last game of that season while his legal status was still being worked out.

"He proved to us in practice that he was the real deal," remembers Preston Burpo, the Sounders' keeper that season and, later, Galindo's teammate at Chivas USA. "But we actually read in the papers he was going to start. There were a lot of question marks in our minds at that point, mostly directed at the coaching staff. But he proved quickly he belonged and was a big part of us making a push in the playoffs."

Galindo's stay in the USL turned out to be a short one, even as he struggled with injuries. None was worse than a horrific accident in a '06 friendly against Burpo and his new team, Chivas USA. Galindo was chasing down a loose ball and collided, face-first at full-speed, with Burpo's knee, leaving him with a broken nose and fractured orbital that required reconstructive surgery.

But he would return that year, and it was a host of late-season performances like his prolific one-goal, three-assist effort against the now-defunct Virginia Beach Mariners that August that caught the eye of then Chivas USA head coach Bob Bradley.

Bradley, who was hired as manager of the U.S. national team that fall, spoke to his successor at Chivas USA, Preki, and recommended he bring Galindo to Los Angeles before the '07 season. It took all of three games for him to declare his assault on MLS. He scored two goals in the opening nine minutes in a 4-0 rout of Real Salt Lake, the first strike just 28 seconds into the match.

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