New Year, New Faces: Scarlett Camberos

Since the end of the 2022 season, Angel City has signed six new players: goalkeeper Angelina Anderson, midfielder Mackenzie Pluck, forward/midfielder Katie Johnson, forward Scarlett Camberos, defender Merritt Mathias, and forward Alyssa Thompson. In the 'New Year, New Faces' series, AngelCity.com is introducing the newcomers one at a time. This week, we get to know forward Scarlett Camberos.

Angel City signed forward Scarlett Camberos in March via transfer from Club América, where she had played since 2022.

Camberos is a San Diego native and UC Irvine graduate. She was a standout for the Anteaters, especially during her 2021 senior season, recording 13 goals and seven assists in 22 appearances. Six of those goals came in two separate hat tricks, making her just the second player in school history to score two hat tricks both across her career and in a single season. She was named Big West Offensive Player of the Year in 2021.

At América, Camberos was a key piece of the attack, notching an impressive 18 goals in 41 appearances; she finished Clausura 2022 with 11 goals in 16 appearances, leading her team in scoring and tying for third league-wide with Tigres and Mexico veteran Stephany Mayor.

Camberos received her first cap for the senior Mexico women's national team in September 2022 against New Zealand.

Like Angel City's other Mexican international, Katie Johnson, Camberos introduced herself to fans by notching a goal against the team in 2022. At the inaugural Copa Angelina, Camberos ran onto a ball into the box by Lizbeth Ovalle, took a touch to settle the ball, and sent a decisive left-footed shot past goalkeeper Brittany Isenhour and inside the far post at a tough angle.

Those in attendance will recall that the atmosphere felt as much like a Mexico home game as an Angel City one, with the crowd split almost evenly between ACFC Sol Rosa and the green, white, and red of El Tri, and thunderous chants of ¡MÉ-XI-CO! breaking out repeatedly during the match.

'That would probably be my best moment in my soccer memory, because it's my first goal for my national team, and my family was there in LA, and honestly, the atmosphere was amazing at the stadium,' said Camberos last week after training.

Representing Mexico has been a dream for Camberos since she was young. 'It's an amazing feeling,' she said. 'I am Mexican-American, but I've always identified myself more as Mexican. My mom makes Mexican food everyday; we speak Spanish at home. So it's my family, too. They would always say 'if you represent Mexico, we would be so proud.''

Copa was extra special in part because of how many family members were able to come, but also because of what Mexico playing in the US represents for the Mexican community here.

'I almost cried when we were pulling up in the bus,' she said. 'It's such an overwhelming feeling to be representing your country and people are there to see you. Usually they can't come to games unless we play in LA, because a lot of people can't cross back—so we're doing it for those people and it's just super, super overwhelming.'

Above all, Camberos is a goal scorer. 'The feeling of scoring a goal,' she said, 'is like no other.'

She's been deployed both in the midfield and on the front line; regardless of position, she's always posed multiple threats, whether it's creating her own chances by beating players on the dribble or by winning the ball high up the field, or in making well-timed runs into the box to combine with teammates.

'I think that athletically, I'm very fast. That's what usually characterizes me,' said Camberos when asked to describe her strengths as a player. 'But I like to play with my teammates, too—one-twos, I really enjoy that part of soccer. And I like beating people one-v-one. That's one of my favorite parts about playing.'

Camberos's 2022 highlight reel shows the SoCal native beating defender after defender by charging at the back line, making a quick feint to wrong-foot her mark, and taking advantage of the space she's just created to fire off a shot.

As good as she is on the dribble, it's the final piece in that sequence, the finish, that really stands out. Camberos's goal against Angel City was a good example of the kind of difficult shot that looks easy when she takes it; the highlight reel above shows a half-dozen similar goals, from angles most forwards wouldn't bother shooting from. Naturally right-footed, she shoots equally well with both feet, and many of her goals come from the left side of the field. She can also shoot from distance, curving the ball up and over a line of defenders.

Advanced stats aren't available for Liga MX Femenil, but her college stats back up the eye test: her senior year, she put 62% of her 73 shots on target, sending about 18% of them into the back of the net.

Camberos is one of a growing but still small number of Latina players in the NWSL. The league has an erratic history with Latina athletes; in its inaugural 2013 season, the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol (FMF), along with the US and Canadian federations, paid the club salaries of a handful of their national team players to lighten the financial load for the nascent league. In fact, it was a Mexico international, Renae Cuéllar, who scored the first goal in NWSL history.

When the FMF pulled out of NWSL allocation in 2016, the number of Latin American players dwindled, and it's only been in recent years, with players like Houston's María Sánchez and Diana Ordóñez, Gotham's Sabrina Flores, and now Camberos, that Mexican players in particular have regained some presence.

For Camberos, it would have been 'super meaningful' to have Mexican athletes to look up to when she was growing up. 'I didn't have a Mexican role model where I was like, 'Oh, like, I want to be like her,'' she said.

In Latin-majority LA, where huge numbers of Latinas grow up playing soccer, that's especially impactful. 'I'm happy to pave this new path for girls like me to follow.'