From Sierra Leone, to MLS, and CBS: Michael Lahoud’s Fantastic Voyage | OneFootball

Michael Lahoud’s life journey has been far from straightforward — he’s escaped a civil war, won a national championship, enjoyed a decade-long pro soccer career, and is now part of CBS’s stellar soccer coverage — but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

It happened 32 years ago, but for Michael Lahoud, it may as well have been yesterday: the day that he left Sierra Leone. He was in his school classroom when his grandmother came barging through the door, grabbing him out of class, and sprinting all the way back to his home, where he found his family members rapidly packing his luggage. When he asked what was going on, he was informed that he was going on vacation to the United States.

The reality: Lahoud’s family was the only in his village to earn an emergency visa to the U.S. His uncle brought him to the port, but when he tried to join him on the boat and failed to produce his own visa, the soldiers shoved him back. At 6 years of age, Lahoud had to make the journey alone, a boat ride and two flights, one from Freetown to Paris, one from Paris to Washington, D.C.

At the time, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a bloody civil war that resulted in between 50,000 to 70,000 casualties from 1991 to 2002. Over 100,000 child soldiers fought in the war, and a quarter of the government’s armed forces were between 8 and 14 years of age. Had he stayed, there was a good chance Lahoud could’ve been forcibly enlisted as one of these soldiers, who were routinely drugged up with heroin, cannabis, cocaine, or palm wine and forced to commit heinous atrocities on a daily basis. Instead, he started a new journey in Virginia, where his parents had moved several years earlier.

“You don’t know what you don’t know as a kid,” said Lahoud in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. “By the time I was 3, I was living with my grandparents, because my parents had already moved to the States, and because of the Civil War going on, it became really difficult for me to get a visa or for them to get access to bring me from Sierra Leone to the States.

“Everyone who had a chance to leave, ended up leaving. I had an aunt that left and who now lives in London, and both of my parents moved to the States. We were the only ones that got out in my family. I was also fortunate on the other hand, where I grew up in a house full of love, and a really close-knit family.”

As he looked to establish a new identity in Northern Virginia, Lahoud continued his soccer ambitions and impressed for Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School before leaving the D.C. suburbs for North Carolina and joining Wake Forest University in 2005. Lahoud quickly emerged as a vital cog in attack for the Demon Deacons, making the 2005 All-ACC Freshman Team and helping them reach the Final Four in 2006.

He did one better in 2007 by guiding them to their first and only national championship, and while Wake Forest failed to defend its crown after losing to North Carolina in the semifinals the next year, Lahoud nevertheless ended his collegiate tenure on a positive note after making the All-ACC Second Team.

AP Photo/Sara D. Davis

“Being a part of the Wake Forest team, even before the national championship season, it taught me two things,” Lahoud said. “One: Dream as big as you want, dream beyond the stars, beyond the moon. And my dream was to go to a school that wasn’t established as a winning program, in terms of titles, and make history. To go and do that, and be part of a group that still has the only star in program history is something no one can ever take away from any of us. I really have a lot of pride in being part of that, and I learned how to be a part of a team.”

His college experience also prepared him for his post-playing career in broadcasting.

“In my current career, I go back to certain principles that I learned from my college coach Jay Vidovich, who always used to say before a big game, ‘Bring your hard hat,'” Lahoud said. “That applies on the field and in life. You better come to work, because those who work in the long term get rewarded.

“You can’t control the timing, but you can always control your effort and attitude towards work. I’m super grateful that I got the college experience, and in a day and age where the college soccer landscape is changing, I’m glad that I was born when I was born, because I don’t think it would have meant as much to me if I didn’t go to school like that when I did.”

Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images

After a stellar career at Wake Forest, where he is currently third in program history in appearances (95) and sixth in starts (89), Lahoud entered the 2009 MLS SuperDraft, and was selected by Chivas USA with the ninth overall pick. He headed across the country and started a new adventure in Los Angeles, where, after biding his time on the fringes, he finally broke into the first team during the final two months of his rookie campaign.

Lahoud started in seven of Chivas’ last eight regular season matches, and scored his first MLS goal against the Houston Dynamo in the season finale. He’d also start both of the club’s playoff matches as Chivas narrowly bounced to crosstown rivals LA Galaxy in the first round. That would be the final playoff appearance in Chivas USA history.

Following an impressive start to his MLS career that saw him record five goals and six assists in 74 appearances, Lahoud was traded to the Philadelphia Union in exchange for Danny Califf on May 17, 2012. Two years later, Chivas USA ceased operations and folded after a decade-long chapter.

“I kind of started seeing the beginning of the end in my last year at Chivas, where the investment in the team was dwindling,” Lahoud said. “But when I got there, we had players like Jesse Marsch, who was a damn good player. We had MLS Cup winners like Jesse, U.S. Open Cup winners like Carey Talley, and one of the all-time leading goal scorers in U.S. soccer history like Ante Razov.

“We had Liga MX legends, guys like Claudio ‘El Emperador’ Suárez, who was a multi-time captain for the Mexican national team. Walking into a team like that, learning how to be a professional, if you would have told me only a couple years afterwards the team would have folded, I would have said, you’re crazy in English, Spanish, German, whatever language. But those are the experiences where being in the trenches with that group in my rookie year, all the way until I got traded to Philadelphia, they really imprinted this sense of being willing to compete, and really learning how to be a true pro.”

Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images

Lahoud made 65 appearances for Philadelphia across his nearly four-year spell with the club, a chapter that also saw him reconnect with his African roots. He returned to Sierra Leone for the first time in two decades to make his international debut in a 3-2 win vs. Equatorial Guinea in World Cup qualifying on September 7, 2013, and played three more times for the Leone Stars in 2014.

More importantly, however, Lahoud started fundraising for Schools for Salone, a charity dedicated to improving Sierra Leone’s education system. He’d also work with international teammate and fellow MLS player Kei Kamara, who fled the Civil War as a teenager, to build the Kei Kamara/Mike Lahoud Education for All Primary School in Allen Town, East End Freetown. Kamara and Lahoud won the 2015 FIFPro Merit Award, an annual award that recognizes players who make positive contributions to society and player welfare, taking home a $25,000 prize.

Image via Africa-Press.net

After Philadelphia, Lahoud saw stints with the New York Cosmos and Miami FC in the NASL, along with USL sides FC Cincinnati and San Antonio FC, before hanging up his boots after the 2019 season.

“I always thought that people were full of it when they kept talking about athletes going through identity crises after retiring, because I felt I had a life outside of soccer,” Lahoud said. “But I went through a massive identity crisis. When you’ve been an athlete your entire life, whether it’s soccer or American football, whatever the sport is, you don’t realize how much a part of your life it is until you are forced to retire.

“My situation was because of COVID; I fell out of love with the game and so many things were changing. I met my now-wife at the time, but the passion that made me get up at 6 in the morning in the off-season to go work out, to do double training sessions, I felt nauseous thinking about it. I kept pressing snooze, and I’d never done that before. I was usually the first one in to get that workout, to do the extra mile when no one was looking. And so, when the world stops and things slowed down, and there’s no sports on, there’s no soccer, it really amplified that.”

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by CBS Sports Golazo (@cbssportsgolazo)

Lahoud went into coaching, spending a season with Trinity University as an assistant, but it was broadcasting that proved to be a better fit, despite never wanting to get into the field during his playing days.

He worked as a color analyst for MLS expansion side Austin FC between 2021 and 2023 and did freelance gigs with ESPN’s ACC Network and Longhorn Network and the CBS Sports Golazo Network before eventually departing Texas for Connecticut in October 2023 and joining Paramount.

Lahoud has spent the past two years serving as an analyst for CBS’ nightly news and highlights show Scoreline and additional CBS Network studio shows like Morning Footy and Box 2 Box. Alongside Jimmy Conrad, Maurice Edu, Clint Dempsey, Thierry Henry, Ian Paul Joy and Charlie Davies, he’s yet another ex-MLS star who’s now translating his soccer knowledge into the punditry business. And he’s thriving.