'He's a legend in this town': Sonny Guadarrama ready to rep as an Apple MLS Season Pass broadcaster

For someone who left soccer, Sonny Guadarrama still has a lot of soccer in his life.

Guadarrama last laced it up professionally for the Austin Bold in 2021, but was already on to one of his next chapters by then — doing Spanish-language commentary for the Austin FC broadcast team and learning and growing in the broadcast booth over two action-packed years. 

He also knew, when he stopped playing, that coaching would be part of the equation — but extended that desire to coach into creating his own soccer-centric school, Sonny Guadarrama Academy. Currently hosted in three different Austin area locations, but moving under one roof this coming fall, the school is growing into a full K-12 private school in which students get to school at 8:30 a.m., train, and then go through their school day while getting in a few reps in 15-minute breaks between language arts, math and science classes. 

That’s not to say that Guadarrama doesn’t miss playing, because he definitely does. But next month, he’ll balance his school’s transition and coaching its academy teams with his next step in broadcasting — as part of the Apple team of broadcasters who will bring MLS matches to Apple TV in 2023 through the new MLS Season Pass channel debut Feb. 1. 

“I don't think it's ever an easy decision to say no to the game,” Guadarrama said Wednesday from the Lakeline indoor soccer facility that doubles as one of his academy’s campuses. “You want to play as long as you can because it literally is the best job ever to be a professional soccer player. It's a privilege to be able to step on a field and get paid for it and do what you love.” 

'Sonny took to broadcasting instantly'

When Austin FC reached out to him to become part of their fledgling broadcast team for the debut season in 2021, he knew it would be a way to keep him in the game even if he wasn’t playing it. “I really had no idea if I was any good at broadcasting,” he observed. “I still don't know if I'm any good at broadcasting. But they said you'll get paid to talk about soccer and be at the games and dissect the game while it's going on.” 

While in his first season as an Austin FC player, he also played his last professional games, making six late 2021 appearances for the Austin Bold to cap off a professional career that started in 2006 with Liga MX team Santos Laguna after graduating from Cedar Park High School in 2005. He recalled scoring at a Bold match with many of his academy students in attendance being a highlight of that final season — but it also solidified the transition to coaching and broadcasting for the 35-year-old. 

He credits broadcast partner Roger Valdivieso for a lot of his early development in the broadcast booth. “Although I do speak Spanish pretty well, talking consistently for a whole game in Spanish was something that I hadn't practiced since living in Mexico,” he noted. Though he grew up learning Spanish, with his dad primarily speaking the language while his mom primarily spoke English in his early years, he credits his 11 years in Mexico as key to his fluency, quipping, “If you don’t speak Spanish, you don’t eat.” 

Adrian Healey, who will also graduate from Austin FC to Apple’s broadcast team, notes that the club felt it important to have Guadarrama involved with his hometown club from the outset. 

“He's a legend in this town,” Healey noted. “I started having conversations with him even before I got down here. It was an absolute no-brainer to have him on Spanish side of the commentary team.” 

Thanks to the club’s decision to stage a pre-match show featuring all four commentators (including Healey’s English-language partner Michael Lahoud and the Spanish duo), Healey got to see Guadarrama develop his broadcasting acumen further. 

“Sonny took to broadcasting instantly,” Healey asserted. “He’s a pro. He's always asking questions. He recognized I've been doing it a while and was always looking for tips on ‘How do I want to say this? How should I address it?’” 

READ MORE: Sonny Guadarrama to be Spanish-language voice for Austin FC on Univision

'I started my own school'

Guadarrama has also taken to education quickly, putting together a team of soccer coaches (including another Austin legend, Kekuta Manneh, as well as former teammates Ever Guzman and Javi Baez) and teachers for a school that’s now 80 students strong, growing from what started as a K-8 operation to what will be a full K-12 academy. 

“I felt like what's missing in the U.S. is really the training aspect of five days a week,” Guadarrama explained. “And it's impossible, really, for parents to be able to take their kids after school and want to drive every day for five days a week. That’s asking a lot of them. So I wanted to figure out how could I incorporate the five days a week, and really, it's only through having a school. So I thought, if we can impact kids, just through soccer, we can impact kids even more if we have it in education and in soccer. So I started my own school.” 

Additional inspiration came from “looking at clubs around the world on how they treat really professional kids that are aspiring to be professional soccer players. A lot of these academies use education and school to have the kids for a longer period, but then at the same time, giving kids their evenings off and being able to go home and be a kid instead of having to drive to soccer training every day, get home late, eat dinner, do homework.” 

He noted that his school allows parents to pick up their children from school by 5:30 — allowing a kid to “be done with soccer and be done with homework, and then really just get to enjoy being a kid” in the evening hours. And, when the 2022 World Cup was uncharacteristically staged during the school year, the staff made sure to weave match watching into the curriculum so the students wouldn’t miss out on something especially important to them. 

Moritz Remark, a 14-year-old eighth grader at the school, likes that he gets to start his day with training rather than lessons, and gets in several training session a day to help fuel his dreams of playing Division 1 men’s college soccer, or even breaking into the pro ranks. 

“Here, you get to go play soccer, your favorite thing to do,” he explained, contrasting it with students who start their days with lessons and tests. “Coach Sonny has really made this a great environment for kids.” 

Ty Rouen, who played on the Austin FC U-13 team last year and is now on the SGA U-14 team, observed, “I came from having an easy time at other schools, getting straight As. I’m getting As now, but it’s really challenging … it’s pushing me to be better.” 

He said that that also extends to Guadarrama’s coaching; Rouen likes that, “He's going to tell you what you need to do better right then and there” rather than coddling players. That extends to conduct off the field; my interview with Guadarrama on Wednesday was prefaced with him instructing students to store their nearby belongings more neatly.

Just a semester in, Guadarrama assesses, “We're growing, so that's a good start. Kids on the soccer field are much more confident.” He noted that the students’ soccer skills and abilities to read the game are improving. 

Plus, they're enjoying it; as he put it, “If you ask the kids, they just love coming to school." 

He reflected, "Not a lot of people would jump into the education business, but it's worth it. You can impact these kids.” 

'A lot more eyes are going to be on MLS'

While he’s definitely focused on growing the school, he’s also excited for the new gig with Apple and what it’ll bring. Both Guadarrama and Healey are still light on details after signing their contracts earlier this month. They're not yet sure how much travel they’ll be doing vs. calling matches from a studio, or how many Austin FC games they'll be calling. It's also unclear how many colleagues they'll work with on the Apple project; an initial group of broadcast talent was announced Jan. 10, with both Healey and Guadarrama getting the green light just this week to make their involvement known. 

Both of them noted, independently of each other, that the truly global scope of Apple TV should help grow the game beyond North America, and Guadarrama’s eager to get started, be it in English, Spanish or a combination of both. 

“It's pretty exciting for us as broadcasters to be able to be on this world level,” noting that fans of international players can now tune in from their home countries to watch those players in action, no matter where they live. 

“You're going to have the capability that's going to go out to really the whole world,” he noted. “And hopefully the numbers of viewers start to increase in MLS soccer, and I think some of the games like the final” — referring to last season’s epic that LAFC won in penalty kicks — “was a crazy game. People would want to have watched that. It was exciting soccer. I think the teams are getting better players and it's becoming a league that’s getting more exciting. So I think a lot more eyes are going to be on MLS because of Apple.” 

This means that more people around the world will be aware of the qualities that have made Guadarrama a legend in Austin.