Ever since Maurice “Mo” Edu could remember, there was a ball rolling around in the Edu household. “My parents are Nigerian — soccer is their first sport and my dad’s first love,” he says. His dad Maurice — “Big Mo” in the local soccer communities of San Bernardino, California, where Mo was raised — instilled in Mo a love for the game that continues to this day. Mo played AYSO before moving to travel team ball. University of Maryland coach Sasho Cirovski noticed him at “one of those big youth tournaments — either Dallas Cup or Surf Cup, I can’t remember” — and later visited the Edu household to make his case to bring Edu back east.

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