Tonight is Landon Donovan's last game for the US Men's National Soccer team. I hated writing that sentence just now. I wanted him to have a chance to say goodbye, and Jurgen Klinsmann gave it to him. Tonight is it.
I'll admit that the love I now have for Lando does not come from rooting for him on principle over long stretches of time. Watching him doesn't bring me joy the same way a Cesc Fabregas or Per Mertesacker or even a twilight Theirry Henry does. At points I even disliked him and spoke poorly of him. The simple fact is I've never known US Soccer without Lando. In a weird way the mere presence of the man over time has somehow seeped into this novelty and nostalgia hardened heart of mine and established an attachment that will likely bring me to tears tonight.
Personally I was never a great player; my skills were unspectacular and my concept of the way the game worked was mediocre at best. I was just a player with passion and heart that never stopped; a work horse. I would never become much more than that but they could never take away that I loved this game more than my more talented teammates did. Loved the game to the point where I played on teams that lost by 6 every week and never stopped being pissed at goals. Loved the game to the point where when I wrecked my car the only thing I wanted to do was make it to a 4 hour practice. So it hurt when I didn't make varsity my junior year, and it was hard not to even try out my senior year. Club soccer was over, my career was done. How can you possibly fill a void like that? Well. You don't.
Instead, you watch.
I grew up in an era where soccer was the bastard child of American past times. I am still haunted by volleyball-esque Mitre balls, Alexi Lalas' goatee, and having channel 124 as your only access to quality soccer. Being one of few people you knew to wake up at 7am solely to scour the ad-ridden depths of foreign internet for a livestream, hoping to find one where you can make out the numbers on the backs, takes it's toll. I had a complex; an elitist, patronizing, holier-than-thou inferiority complex. I desperately wanted my sport, the sport held so highly in my heart, to be relevant. I wanted to be able to talk to my friends or strangers about it. Formations and false nines, transfers and youth products, the likes. So when our US talisman, LD, wasn't making it up to scratch, thereby justifying my colleagues dismissal of soccer? I blamed him. I was tired of my passion being slandered. If our national team was only better, if our captain, our best player, our icon was only better, my zeal for the sport would be justified. Not advancing past the group stage in 2006, being displaced at his own club by Beckham, the only other name soccer name Americans seemed to know, a failed stint at Bayern, LD was unfairly confirming everything people said about it never being an American sport. I needed so much more from him. I needed a hero from him. Then it came.
Go, go, USA. THAT goal.
Just like that he was no longer a name said in oft condescending tones. He became a household name that people believed in. People were willing to write about, talk about, argue on how overrated or underrated he is or isn't.
He gave us a moment heroes do. He gave us a moment to remember. Can you remember anything else from the game before or the game after? He made soccer relevant. He made me relevant. All the validation I never got as a player or a fan sprung up from the ground like he had hit oil that day in South Africa.
I would argue that if it had been anyone else on that squad, even Dempsey, it would not have had the galvanizing effect it did. Videos of “USA” chants went viral. I got goosebumps. The prodigal son, our failed hope, the name people knew and felt disappointed by, gave us a glimpse that soccer CAN be an American thing. The fallout? His loans to Everton became massive, not taking an offseason became heroic, his success in the MLS became meaningful. Would the US have followed Gomez, Findley or Edu the same way? Since, soccer has only become more accessible. ESPN showed EPL matches and NBC outbid them later down the road. Vancouver, Portland, Montreal, NYC, Orlando, and Atlanta each got teams. Fanatics are on the fringes of mainstream. I know there is more to all of this than change a single goal. Entertainment is globalized, money is being invested, money is being made, other sports declining, etc etc ad infintum.
But I've never known US Soccer without Lando. He is the face, the hope, the disappointment, and the rise of our beloved sport to my generation of fans and players. He is inexorably tied with full field suicides after school, with tinkering for endless hours on FIFA in Tay's living room, with getting Capri Suns and orange slices after games, with how awful shin guards make your bag smell, with the elation after your first goal, with the frustrations of getting walloped, with the chills after his goal. Hearts don't care that heroes don't last forever and that talismans don't actually do anything. Talismans are symbols, centerpieces, reminders of a time when you saw sports as sacred and not complex means of entertainment. Heroes are going to be cried for missed when they are gone.
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