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Why Giuseppe Rossi’s RSL deal is exciting and weird

If you’d asked a decade ago where Giuseppe Rossi would be playing in 2020, I don’t think anybody would have said Major League Soccer. Certainly fewer would have said Real Salt Lake.

But time has a funny way of playing games with you.

Let’s humor time for a moment, though. The 2010-11 season saw Rossi with the joint fifth-highest goals total in La Liga, ahead of players like Karim Benzema (though behind some Ronaldo and Messi duo, whose fates were knotted together for so long.)

He was a name in American soccer not for having played here, but for having not played here, despite having the opportunity to represent such a giant on the world stage and instead choosing a smaller, somewhat boot-shaped country.