by Tim Howard
“Okay, Tim,” said Chris, “Got it.”
Before the game, there had been some talk in the media about how Klinsmann and Löw might agree to take it easy on each other and have their teams play for a draw since that would be enough for both teams to advance. Whoever concocted that ridiculous scenario clearly doesn’t know the competitive mind-set of the two coaches, let alone the 22 players who would be on the field.
On the contrary, this would be anything but a stroll in the park.
From the kickoff, Germany attacked relentlessly. Because they always seemed to have the ball, that meant I had a busy 45 minutes. I made a couple of tough saves but at halftime, the game remained scoreless.
Then in the 55th minute, I dove at full stretch to keep out a shot by the big German defender Per Mertesacker. I could only parry it to the edge of the box where Thomas Müller was lurking. Müller ripped a grass-cutter past me into the far corner. Germany was up 1–0.
I glanced at Chris Woods then. He held up both index fingers. He was telling me that a thousand miles away, Portugal and Ghana were tied, 1–1.
If Ghana got another goal, and if our score remained the same, we’d be going home.
In the 73rd minute, two of our players, Jermaine Jones and Alejandro Bedoya, collided with each other going for a high ball. I could hear the smack of their heads from where I stood, half a field away. They both crumpled to the ground. Jermaine lay there for two minutes. Later we’d learn that he’d fractured his nose, too—our second broken nose in three games.
With ten minutes left, Chris flashed me a 2–1 score with his fingers, without noting whether Ghana or Portugal was ahead. I glanced at Matt Besler, who gave a slight shake of his head, as if saying, “Don’t ask me.” I turned back to Chris. He gave the thumbs-up sign. Portugal was on top.
All we had to do now to advance was not to concede another goal. That is, if the Portugal-Ghana scoreboard didn’t change.
We played it tight until the final whistle. There was the tiniest pause then, when no one was 100 percent sure of the Portugal result. Then suddenly the subs and coaches on the bench were sprinting toward us on the field. We’d lost this game, but it was clear from their faces that we had won something bigger.
Portugal 2, Ghana 1. We would advance.
Before the Belgium game, my mom and I went out to dinner at a landmark restaurant in the lush Jardins district of São Paulo.
Right away, I heard people whispering about me. Tim Howard . . . goalie . . .
U.S. keeper . . . Tim Howard . . . that’s him.
Mom and I sat together for a long time. We talked about the tournament, the children, the Leadership Academy that would soon open in New Jersey; Faith had told me recently that it would bear my name.
We talked about Laura and Trey: they’d tied the knot last October.
“It’s nice to see her so happy,” I said.
My mom smiled. “It’s funny,” she mused. “My generation is the one that had bitter divorces. Maybe yours will find a kinder way of doing it.”
We talked about the future—what my life might look like in a few years when I was done with soccer and finally able to move back to Memphis.
Dan was encouraging me to take advantage of opportunities right now, to sign endorsement and broadcasting deals.
Mom sighed. “It’s hard to believe that you might retire someday,” she said. “I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”
“I know. But I’m thirty-five now, Mom.”
It was easy conversation, the most leisurely, undistracted time we’d had together—just the two of us—in years. Here we were at this exquisite restaurant, and all around us people were surreptitiously trying to snap my photo. But in a way, it was as if we were right back in one of those roadside motels in Jersey: just me and Mom, eating our PB&Js. It was like nothing had changed, even though everything had.
“How do you feel about Belgium?” my mom asked.
I gave her an honest answer.
“I think it’s going to be a tough game,” I said. “But they’re certainly beatable.”
MAKING HISTORY
So much has been said about the Belgium game. Every minute of play has been analyzed, every save I made has been dissected as if I were some kind of lab animal.
Since July 2, 2014, I’ve seen what feels like eight million images of the game as it was refracted through other people’s eyes.
I’ve seen the images from packed stadiums and crowded living rooms and standing-room-only bars and city squares. I’ve seen still photos and video clips of people watching: the crowd in Soldier’s Field, my family, even Landon. I’ve seen photographs of strangers clutching their heads in anguish. People peeking through their fingers as if they’re afraid of what they might glimpse, yet they cannot look away.
It’s hard to connect all those images to what I experienced on the field.
Here’s what I would tell someone about the first 45 minutes of that game: We fought hard. We held our own. Nobody scored.
Then ten minutes into the second half, something shifted. It was like the Belgium players got a turbo boost during halftime. Suddenly every time I looked up, a ball hurtled toward me. Mertens took a shot. Then Fellaini. DeBruyne. Origi. Vertonghen. DeBruyne again. Vertonghen again.
By the end of regulation time, Belgium had 31 attempts on goal to our 7. They had 16 corners to our 4.
None of them got through. We went into extra time believing we would find a way.
Every game a person plays is a culmination of all his experiences leading up to that moment. That was as true for me in the Belgium game as it has ever been.
It was as if 20 years of learning from my role models had been distilled into that 120 minutes.
Take the first save I made, for example—the shot by Origi that I kicked away with my leg.
That one came from playing in all those New Jersey youth league games. That save made me feel like I was 15 again, working with Mulch. I had been a good athlete then, but I was still raw. To protect the goal, I had to make myself big, use every part of my body.
By the time I got to my fourth save—a leaping fingertip deflection over the crossbar—I was right back in my MetroStars days, knocking the ball away from the chaos and confusion in front of me. In fact, the entire second half reminded me of playing on the losing-est team in the MLS. We were pinned back, defending for our lives just like we’d been all those years in Giants Stadium.
In a way, it felt like Mulch was right there with me—all of those painful “blast drills” that he insisted upon, when the shots flew in at me so fast, I didn’t have time to think. The times he made me get up and keep going, when I felt like I had nothing left to give.
But Mulch wasn’t the only one on the field with me. Tony Meola and Kasey Keller were out there, too—Tony with his brash, blue-collar courage and Kasey with his dogged refusal to get rattled under any circumstance.
And those footwork drills that I’d hated so much when I first came to Everton? Those helped me make my sixth save. A low, hard ball came skimming across the grass, headed straight down my throat. Using Chris Woods’s balance drill, I killed it dead. Just like he always wanted me to.
Even Edwin van der Sar was in that game with me. My second and third saves required that I drop down and let my body cushion the ball as it pinged off my chest. That move? Classic Edwin; I learned it from watching him when I was his number two.
And the truth is, it wasn’t just my soccer influences I channeled. My Nana and Poppa and Momma and Mom. Laura and my children. They were all present in the urgency I felt. There had been so much sacrifice, by so many people, so many nights and months and years we’d been apart. I’d given up everything—my marriage, my home, my role in the day-to-day lives of Ali and Jacob—to be here.
I’d be damned if, in this moment, on the world’s biggest stage, those sacrifices weren’t going to be worthwhile.
All through the match, I kept waiting to see Romelu Lukaku get off the Belgi
um bench and be summoned to the touchline as a replacement for Origi. Big Rom had been a game changer at Everton last season.
Now, as we headed into overtime, he was about to become one here as well.
Rom is so powerfully built, so deceptively quick, that he’s tough enough for defenders to deal with at the start of a game when they’re feeling fresh and energized. The last thing I wanted was for him to come on the field now, when we were running on fumes.
His impact was instantaneous. He muscled the ball off Matt Besler near midfield and burst down the right flank. Then he crossed the ball to DeBruyne, who was making a run into the middle of our penalty area.
Besler raced back to our box and did his damnedest to block DeBruyne’s shot from one angle as I slid in from the other direction. Too late.
DeBruyne’s shot flashed through the sliver of space between where Besler could stop it and where I could. 1–0, Belgium.
We pushed for the equalizer with everything we had. We had a great chance when Jermaine blasted a shot from the edge of the penalty area. The ball took a deflection off of Jan Vertonghen, and it bounced toward Clint in front of the goal.
A couple of inches to Clint’s left or right, and he would have buried it. But the ball landed awkwardly under his feet. He couldn’t get a shot off before Belgium cleared.
By this point, Rom was causing havoc down at our end of the field. Twice, I had to scramble the ball away from his low drives.
But I could do nothing about his third attempt, which came in the last minute of the extra-time half.
DeBruyne had torn down the left flank. He sent a defense-shredding pass between Cameron and Besler. It was right in Rom’s flight path. Rom never even broke stride as he rifled the ball past me.
Now we were down 2–0, with just a single 15-minute half left in the game.
I glanced up at my mom in the stands. The look on her face was one I rarely saw. It was pure anguish. She’d been riding the crazy emotion of this game with me—hell, she’d been riding the crazy emotion of my life with me—that second goal had devastated her.
I flashed her a hint of a smile. I pumped my fist slightly. It’s like I was saying to her, It’s okay, Mom. It’s going to be alright. It was as if we’d reversed roles since my days on the rec field.
The thing is, even if the rest of the world had given up hope, I still believed.
Back in November 2008, when I was still a fresh face at Everton, we played a game against West Ham. We’d trailed by a goal until the 83rd minute. Then, Everton’s Louis Saha crossed to Joleon Lescott, who headed in an equalizer. Two minutes later, Saha drove the ball into the lower corner of the net. In the 87th minute, Saha scored again. Three goals in four minutes.
Games can turn around fast, especially when teams get nervous.
So I knew that if we could score one—take it from a comfortable lead to an uncomfortable lead—Belgium was going to feel the pressure.
Could we do it? Absolutely.
During the extra-time break that’s all anyone talked about: one goal. One. Jürgen remained upbeat, full of positive energy. We were going to get one, and then we were going to keep fighting.
After all, if there’s one defining characteristic of the U.S. team, it’s that we don’t know when to give up.
Two minutes after the restart, all that belief resulted in an incredible moment.
Julian Green, our German American teenaged sub, had come on the field as Jürgen’s final roll of the dice. Michael Bradley dinked a ball over the top of the Belgian defense, and Julian took his first-ever World Cup touch.
Whoa baby! He scored on a gorgeous volley.
All we needed was one more.
I remember looking at Michael Bradley during those final minutes of the game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone battling harder. Michael’s engine never stops. Not even when the gears have been stripped and ground down to shavings. He’s Bob Bradley’s son, through and through. Somehow, he’ll open up into a sprint even when he’s cramping. He’ll push from one end of the field to the other, even when everyone around him is gasping for breath. In the group stage, Michael had logged more miles than any other player: nearly 24 miles in 3 games.
Now I saw him running, emptied out, yet still going, and I believed—not hoped, not prayed, believed—we were going to nail the equalizer.
When we did, this game was going to go to penalty kicks.
And when it went to PKs, I was going to do what I’ve done so many times before. I was going to save some. And we were going to win this thing.
We had two final chances. In the 114th minute, we won a free kick just outside Belgium’s penalty area. In training, we’d worked on a clever set piece that could surprise a defense expecting one of our guys to curl the ball over or around the wall. To pull out that play now, with just a few minutes left in the game, required massive guts.
Michael ran up to the free kick as if he was going for glory but suddenly drew back his leg and passed the ball on the ground to Wondo, standing with his back to the goal on the edge of the area. As the Belgium defense converged on him, Wondo flicked the ball to his left and onto the foot of Clint, who never broke stride as he busted through the logjam of players in the box. At that moment, I started thinking about penalty kicks. But Thibaut Courtois, Belgium’s towering keeper, reacted with world-class anticipation and threw his long body over the ball.
What a beautiful “almost” that was.
A minute later, we made our last charge up the field and DeAndre had a decent look at goal. How amazing would it have been if a kid who was only in his second year in MLS had tied the game in the final seconds? But we were flat out of miracles. Yedlin’s shot was saved by Courtois.
And that was it. All around me, my teammates dropped to the turf, as if they’d been powered by hope alone. Now that the hope was gone, they had nothing left.
The first person to come up to me was Romelu. He hugged me. I’ve had a lot of bittersweet hugs in my life. This one topped them all.
As I left the field, a FIFA official told me that I’d been selected randomly for drug testing. He handed me a bottle of water and said I’d better start drinking.
Then another official approached me. He told me something that I couldn’t quite make sense of in that moment.
He informed me I’d just made World Cup history. I was the first keeper to have made 15 saves in a single game.
Fifteen saves.
The number was meaningless, divorced completely from this hollowed-out moment in time.
History?
I’d have given up that history in a nanosecond if we could have made it through to the quarterfinals.
When I walked into the doping room, Romelu was sitting there, too, his own bottle of water in hand.
“Hey, man,” I said.
I was so tired, I could barely speak.
I sat down. Rom and I’d already said everything we needed to say in that hug we’d shared on the field. We sat for a few moments in comfortable silence.
“Tim,” Rom said, “how’s the family?”
“Good, Rom. Thanks. They’re great.”
“Did the kids get down for any games?”
“Yeah, they did,” I said. “Jacob’s got World Cup fever big time.”
We each took huge gulps of water, as much as we could possibly swallow. The sooner I could produce my urine sample, the sooner I could get home.
“You get any word about next season?” I asked. I knew he wanted to come back to Everton, but he still belonged to Chelsea, who had loaned him to us last season.
“Nothing for sure,” he said. “I hope I can come back. It’s a good club.”
“It is,” I said. “It’s the best club in the league.”
“There aren’t a lot of . . .” He paused.
“Egos,” I said.
“That’s right, not a lot of egos or drama.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope you come back. You fit in well.”
Our eyes m
et, and we smiled. Then we each knocked back a bunch more water.
I called the kids after leaving Salvador.
“Daddy?” Ali asked. “Are you sad?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
She thought about that for a bit, then responded, with more assurance than you’d think a child could have, “I’m proud of you, Daddy. And I’m really happy. Because now you’re coming home.”
Ali’s words soothed the sting of the Belgium loss. Sometimes all it takes is the perspective of a 7-year-old.
GAME OF MY LIFE
Over the next few days, I received hundreds of texts, emails, and phone calls from all over the world.
From Steve Senior, my high school buddy: OMG!!!! You were AMAZING!!!!!!!
From Mulch: You inspired a hell of a lot of kids out there today.
I got texts from Landon and Carlos. From Kasey and Tony Meola. From my Everton teammates and friends.
I was too drained, and too down, to respond to more than a handful.
Steve got a two-word text: thx man.
For Mulch, there was only one: Gutted.
That night I slept for 16 hours straight. In the morning, I met up with Clint. We were told President Obama would be calling.
“You guys did us proud,” Obama said. Then he said to me, specifically, “I don’t know how you are going to survive the mobs when you come back home, man. You’ll have to shave your beard so they don’t know who you are.”
Even before I left Brazil—and then for weeks after—I started getting media requests: Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the Today show, Dr. Oz, Access Hollywood, the Late Show with David Letterman, the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Sports Awards, Good Morning America, and the ESPYS, just to name a few.
Disney wanted to fly my family and me to Orlando. Nickelodeon was willing to send a private jet. Other companies offered staggering amounts of money for me to show up, sign autographs, and pose for photos.