Justin Meram was at a crossroads.
He’d just finished high school and there were the traditional questions: College? Work? Follow his brothers into their dad’s construction business? He wasn’t thinking much about the future that day in the summer of 2007, kicking around in a park in Scottsdale, Arizona when he caught someone’s eye.
“I wasn’t recruited to play soccer in college,” said the midfielder, who was dangerously close to being totally overlooked, before eventually going on to play for over a decade in Major League Soccer.
Thank you for the wonderful memories @CharlotteFC 🩵 pic.twitter.com/N36HPytsj2
— Justin Meram (@JustinMeram) February 12, 2024
“Someone just saw me playing in a park for fun,” added the former wide man and one-on-one wizard, now 35 and helping Division III NISA pros Michigan Stars get a run going in the Open Cup – a tournament he won with Atlanta United back in 2019.
That someone who saw him that day was Maurice Hughes, alumnus of Yavapai College in nearby Prescott, Arizona – where Meram’s family had relocated from the Detroit suburbs. He called Mike Pantalione and Hugh Bell, who ran the show at the school, one of the top junior college soccer programs in the country.
“That was that,” Meram remembered with a chuckle about being given a walk-on role in the team sight unseen by the coaches. “Maurice thought I had talent and suddenly it all started from there.”
It was one of those magic moments so rare it hardly seems credible. But that’s just how it went down. Rare talent spotted, appreciated, approached and set about on a path. Meram won two Junior College National Championships with Yavapai. He was named the 2008 National Junior College Player of the Year. Then the University of Michigan – one of those big schools who’d initially ignored his talents – came calling.
The Wolverines had a full-scholarship in their hands. Meram had 14 goals and 24 assists in 41 games as a Wolverine and was picked 15th in the First Round of the 2011 MLS SuperDraft.
Meram grew up playing soccer in his backyard in Shelby Township, Michigan, a suburb north of Detroit. He joined up with well-known youth club side Vardar in a squad made up of kids from all over Metro Detroit. “We always went to the Nationals,” recalled Meram of his early days with the ball, learning the crucial lessons that saw him play for five different MLS teams before coming out of an assumed – if not declared – retirement a few weeks ago to line up for NISA’s Michigan Stars.
“Back then it was about having fun, loving the game and trying to grow every year.”
The only trophy Meram won in his decade as a top-flight MLS pro was our Open Cup. It’s that very same prize he’s hunting this year with the Stars, who beat NPSL’s Steel City FC and MNUFC2 of MLS NEXT Pro to book a place in the Third Round.
Meram, who has slowed somewhat but still has a preternatural ability to go around defenders and create shooting opportunities, was outstanding for Atlanta United in the 2019 Cup-winning run. “The farther you get, the tougher it gets. It starts to feel more real,” he said on the eve of that year’s Final – a sentiment that fits his humbler home with the Stars today.
His performance in the 2019 Semifinal, coincidentally on the road against Orlando City where he had an unhappy stint the season before, was a perfection. With then Atlanta ace Josef Martinez out injured, Meram picked up the baton in attack and tortured his marker out on the left side. He constantly poked holes in the Orlando City back-line and forced defenders into mistakes.
THANK YOU MINNESOTA! ONTO THE NEXT! 🏆🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🏆🇺🇸🏆 pic.twitter.com/kK2aWLxihH
— Michigan Stars Football Club (@MichiganStarsFC) April 3, 2024
There aren’t many third division sides that have an Open Cup winner who can tell the young ones what it’s like to lift the oldest prize in our country’s soccer. “It’s an incredible feeling,” he said. “There’s nothing else like it.
“You always have to dig deep,” added Meram, who never would have expected what’s come his way since that fateful pick-up game long ago in Scottsdale. “You can’t be scared of the moment.”
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.