The television camera in the tunnel under the stadium showed the French players slogging off the team bus, with headsets on, ball caps or knitted wool caps scrunched down over their heads, wraparound sunglasses to ward off the outside world.
This is standard mode for world-weary athletes getting off a team bus, but what was not standard was the immense fatigue, physical and mental, that showed on the players. As they stepped gingerly off the bus, they all seemed to buckle, as if a knee or two, perhaps a spinal column, maybe the pedal extremities, were not working properly.
“These guys are screwed,” I said to my wife as we watched the scene on television. We were ensconced in a gorgeous Marriott on the south side of the Han River, with a great south view of green hills and an arts center. We would have a sensational month. The French would not.
The best players in the world were running on the hamster wheel of soccer. In 1992–93, the European association had upgraded an old cup competition into a made-for-television midweek extravaganza, the Champions League. In the days off from expanded club schedules, star players now flew to matches with their national teams.
After winning the 1998 World Cup at home, the French had managed to win the 2000 European championship, achieving the rare double of keeping players healthy and contented for a two-year stretch. But four? Watching the familiar French stars recoil as they put one foot after the other made it clear that winning championships is the equivalent of dog years.
After one more season with Juventus, the great Zidane had taken even bigger money to join the aging stars of Real Madrid, known as the Galácticos. By my count, he had played in 169 league matches for his clubs since the 1998 World Cup and at least 27 official international matches for France. That would be a total of 196—nearly 50 matches a year, nearly one a week, at the highest level.
Thirty-eight minutes into the friendly with South Korea, Zidane hobbled toward the sideline, touching his left thigh. He sat the rest of the match, with ice packs on his thigh, as France managed to hold off the Reds, 3–2. However, the South Koreans always take their toll, with their energy and the odd elbow or heel where it hurt the most. And they were playing at home. The French were a long way from home.
This was apparent on May 31 in World Cup Stadium. The schedule maker, with a sense of whimsy, had arranged for the defending champions to play their opening match of the tournament against Senegal, a former French colony that supplied footballers to many European clubs. In Senegal’s first World Cup match ever, a large twenty-year-old midfielder, Papa Bouba Diop, born in Dakar and a professional in Switzerland, scored the only goal, in the thirtieth minute. France then looked lethargic in a scoreless match with Uruguay and, with Zidane finally back on the field, was hammered out of the World Cup, 2–0, by Denmark.
Watching the French trudge off the field at breezy Incheon, I thought of the best ice hockey team I had ever covered, the New York Islanders, who won four straight Stanley Cup championships from 1980 through 1983. By 1984, all those play-off games had caught up with the Islanders, who seemed to be skating in Slurpees. The French seemed to be running in crème brûlée.
* * *
The quick demise of the French opened up the tournament for fresh faces—Turkey, South Korea, and Senegal, plus the sleeping giant from North America.
The 2002 U.S. team can now be seen as a collection of epic characters in a special time. Did Americans really appreciate them?
Straight from its disgrace in France in 1998, the United States entered the final phase of qualifying with a new generation and a new attitude personified by Bruce Arena, the new coach, a former lacrosse goalie and soccer keeper at Cornell University and a highly successful coach at the University of Virginia and DC United. Arena knew his team had to earn its points at home.
The golden age of American soccer began against Mexico in the cold of Columbus, Ohio, on February 28, 2001. The U.S. federation, recalling past embarrassments, tried to place home qualifying matches in modest stadiums in heartland cities, where it could possibly keep down the number of fans from other nations in the Americas.
The first game of the final round, known as the Hexagonal because it included six teams, was held in twenty-nine-degree weather in central Ohio. Despite the best efforts of the U.S. federation, hundreds of Mexicans showed up in the parking lot, wearing warm clothing including serapes and sombreros, the trademarks of these loyal fans. Some had even managed to buy tickets. The American team came out for warmups in shorts. The Mexican team did not come out until game time.
Welcome to the Hex. In the fifteenth minute, Rafael Márquez, the Mexican headhunter, whacked Brian McBride in the eye, forcing him to be replaced by Josh Wolff. Then Claudio Reyna was hurt and had to be replaced by Clint Mathis.
Was this the long-awaited new breed, the product of the youth leagues and the college feeder system? Mathis and Wolff had known each other since they were nine years old, in the youth leagues of Georgia, and both had gone to the University of South Carolina.
Soon after coming on, Mathis spotted his Georgia buddy making a break and unleashed a lead pass that Wolff converted to put the Yanks ahead. Later, Wolff set up Earnie Stewart for a 2–0 victory. Three points taken from Mexico in the frigid air of Ohio. That game is still remembered by Mexican fans as La Guerra Fría—the Cold War.
The Yanks rolled up thirteen points in their first five matches before the trip to Azteca, two days ahead of the return match. Arena did not want to be there long enough for his players to adjust to the rarefied air. In and out.
They would receive considerable police protection on the bus ride from hotel to stadium, but sometimes there was an odd touch:
The man was drunk, he was dirty, he was maybe three feet tall, and he was rolling on a glorified skateboard near the American team bus, shouting things most of us could not understand, which was probably a good thing. The police did not chase him away. Perhaps he was some sort of unofficial greeter to Azteca, the fabled stadium that had already held two World Cup finals.
“What a great place!” one young reporter raved as he walked onto the field for the workout, impressed by the sweep of ninety-five thousand empty seats.
“Try playing here tomorrow,” said Jeff Agoos, who was back for a third try at playing in the World Cup. Agoos had his own memories of Azteca: four years earlier, in this same qualifying format, he had received a red card for swinging his arm near a Mexican player. The United States had somehow held on for a 0–0 draw, which was the all-time highlight of seventeen qualifiers in Mexico City—sixteen losses, one draw.
“Altitude, heat, smog, and, on top of all that, you’ve got the Mexican team, so there are a number of factors why it is difficult,” Agoos said. “I think it’s also sort of a mind-set. You can make it more difficult than it has to be. If you come in with the idea that you’re going to come out on the wrong end of it, then you’re going to have a long day. Your mind-set has to be right going into Azteca.”
The word revancha—revenge—was reproduced all over the city. Revenge for what? Never quite clear in the Hex but most likely revenge for General Winfield Scott and the siege of Veracruz and the loss of 525,000 square miles, much of the modern southwest United States. Stuff like that.
Displaying normal gamesmanship, the groundskeepers kept the tarp on the field when the Yanks reported for their workout. Rainy season, the groundskeepers insisted. Arena claimed his rights by demanding that the tarp be taken off the entire field; then he did not use one end of it. Keep the groundskeepers in shape. Healthy for them. That’s the way it works in the Hex.
The next day the place was jumping with ninety-five thousand fans in place, with a vehemence I had never felt in this stadium during the 1986 World Cup. Revancha.
In the sixteenth minute, Alberto Garcia Aspe, a longtime regular, just recalled for this match, lofted a floater into the box, where Jared Borgetti, the striker, essentially unmarked, headed the ball into the upper right corner.
“Foolish goal,” Arena said
. “Poor decision.” The goal stood up and Mexico won, 1–0. As the American buses left Azteca, the tiny greeter was still there on his skateboard, still shouting imprecations.
The tactics of the Hex continued on September 1 in Washington against Honduras. To make some money, the United States had put the match in RFK Stadium, a noble soccer venue within driving range of millions of Spanish-speaking fans. To counter that, the federation tried to limit the sale of tickets to Americans only, which annoyed Honduran fans, including the country’s ambassador, who raised the possibility of suing for the right to buy tickets in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“I pay my taxes, but when I call to get a ticket they tell me they are sold out,” said Rafael Garcia of Ridgewood, Queens, a fan who had driven down the interstate, blue-and-white banner flapping, horn honking.
Eventually, tickets were made available for some Honduran fans in one distant corner of the upper deck, the loudest and happiest section in the joint, as it turned out.
The Honduran players did not need a ticket controversy to be prodded into an attitude. Every time they came to the States, they screwed up their faces and marched as if on a mission: “Thank you to the Dole Fruit Company for many kindnesses in the past.”
This chippy posture helped the Honduran players and fans eat the Americans’ lunch in a 3–2 whipping. “I guess there are a lot of Hondurans in Washington,” said Landon Donovan, a nineteen-year-old prospect with a temporary gold dye job, who was making his first World Cup qualifier start.
On September 5, the Americans lost in Costa Rica, 2–0. Shortly after that they—and the country—had more important things to think about, with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The next qualifier took place on October 7 in Foxborough, Massachusetts, against Jamaica. On a cool autumn day, the mood was subdued after Arena told the players that the United States was invading Afghanistan to seek the people who had planned the attack on 9/11.
Claudio Reyna had witnessed an ugly gesture as he played for Rangers in Glasgow a few days before this qualifier. As he prepared to make a throw-in, Reyna saw one Celtic fan moving his hands like an airplane crashing into a building. The fan was banned from further matches, and Reyna was shaking his head when asked about it. (John Terry, the sordid Chelsea captain, had shown his lack of character a day after 9/11, getting drunk and mocking stranded Americans in an airport bar.)
Reyna wore the captain’s band as the United States beat Jamaica, 2–0, on two goals by Joe-Max Moore, a gritty midfielder from that well-known soccer bastion of Tulsa, Oklahoma. (“I cannot imagine a better name for him than Joe-Max,” said Eric Wynalda, as Moore was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2013. “That’s what he gave you—maximum.”) The double by Joe-Max gave the Americans the victory that qualified them for the 2002 World Cup. The long hard road of the Hex had toughened the Americans for the year ahead.
* * *
Bruce Arena had a sarcastic way of employing his Noo Yawk accent. I had no problem deciphering him because I remembered him as a high school athlete from my younger reporting days on Long Island.
He usually began his answers to reporters’ questions with the word “Obviously.” He also had an eye for talent and speed and change, and he was fearless and did not act as if soccer was overly complicated.
For example, FIFA had commissioned a new ball, not for improved aerodynamics or durability but for marketing: the official World Cup ball would sell around the globe, after consumers saw it on television. The players, being players, were convinced that the new ball veered like a space capsule with a buzz on. Keepers hated it. This is a given: every four years, keepers hate the new ball.
Asked to discuss the new spheroid endorsed by FIFA, Arena refused to take the issue seriously.
“It’s a BAWL,” he enunciated.
When Arena said that, I burst out laughing. Everything he said made perfect sense to me. Yuh know what I mean?
* * *
During the long march to the World Cup, Arena had upgraded his squad with new players like John O’Brien and Tony Sanneh, most of them with overseas experience.
The new age was personified by Landon Donovan, who turned twenty just before the World Cup. Fleet and opportunistic, Donovan had a decided tropism for his home in Southern California rather than some sleety soccer enclave in Germany, even if it cost him income and growth as a player. Donovan had a mind of his own, but when he broke into stride on an open field he was a thing of beauty.
Another new face was DaMarcus Beasley, out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who had resisted teasing back home that black American men do not play this sport. Only five feet, eight inches tall, Beasley could dunk a basketball; on the huge grass field, he would track down stray balls deep in defensive corners and come back and lead the fast break, tossing his rubbery body into the mix.
Arena, who had played one game as keeper for the national team, chose three terrific athletes with strong personalities to play his old position, including Brad Friedel of the Blackburn Rovers. Tall and physical, Friedel had helped win a national title at UCLA and had once been invited to be a walk-on member of the basketball team. The man could leap. Kasey Keller, who was now playing for Tottenham Hotspur, felt he had a shot at the first-string job until it dawned on him that Arena was going with Friedel. Arena asked Tony Meola to come back as the third keeper, and Meola responded by practicing hard and teaching younger players what he had learned in 1990 and 1994.
One of my favorite players on that 2002 team was Clint Mathis, out of Conyers, Georgia, who liked the nickname Cletus because of its unabashed pine-woods aura. He had a southern charm and a mind of his own.
Cletus showed up in Seoul sporting a Mohawk haircut, courtesy of his roommate Pablo Mastroeni. This gained him considerable attention from the Korean media and fans. Mathis was a throwback, an athlete who loved attention. The other players would vanish to their families or the private game rooms, but Cletus hung out in the lobby along with his proud mom, Pat. He did not mind when young ladies asked if they could pose for a photo with the southerner with the Mohawk. Sometimes they even had a camera.
His attitude carried onto the field. Cletus was of the firm opinion that a player like himself should not waste too much time digging for the ball in a distant corner when he could be shooting it. American youth leagues do not encourage gunners who fire away, the way kids in real soccer countries learn to do in impromptu sandlot games.
Cletus was one year past a serious knee operation, and Arena questioned whether he was pushing himself hard enough. “I think he’s got a real good future if he can just develop some better habits as a professional, and that will happen,” Arena said. “That’s part of being in an environment where that is required of a player.”
Sports Illustrated thought enough of Cletus to put him on the cover of its pre–World Cup issue, making him the first male soccer player on the cover in eight years. He seemed destined to be a star—James Dean in a jersey.
By sheer luck, I saw a lot of the American team. A friend had tipped me off that the United States was staying at the Marriott, with a great pool and located directly above a major arcade and subway station, and I made reservations for myself and my colleague Jeré Longman before the Marriott system began to block reporters.
Staying in the same hotel did not gain us any special access—not with the genial and armed team security agent perched near the elevator bank. However, whenever the team was available, I could pop downstairs without having to commute from another hotel.
One day, I interviewed players about the custom of exchanging jerseys with opponents after a match. Some players told me how they would immediately wear the jersey somebody else had just worn for ninety sweaty minutes, which sounded kind of creepy. Another time, I got permission to visit the recreation room the federation had reserved for the wives and children of the players.
I also chatted with a few survivors of the 1998 château, who appreciated Arena’s putting them up in the M
arriott.
“We’re all adults and we like to have time to ourselves,” Keller said. “We were all lolling around trying to keep from going nuts.” Then he added, “Here you can walk into a mall and get a Starbucks.”
Team officials organized an outing to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone where South Korean and American troops have been on guard against North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. It was not far, maybe an hour on modern roads, in and around mountains and inlets, to go from a modern city with Starbucks to an armed standoff—“the most dangerous place on earth,” as President Clinton once called it.
The American federation thoughtfully provided a separate bus and issued guidelines for reporters—no shorts, no logos, no waving at the North Korean side because observers would be taking video, and any expression of friendship would be portrayed as a weakening of resolve. We did not understand until we saw armed soldiers of one side glaring at armed soldiers from the other side, identical faces, only a few yards apart. We were told about the sneak attack years earlier when North Koreans had suddenly mauled South Koreans with hatchets, in a dispute over a few trees. The hatred in the eyes of the soldiers was tangible.
The buses made a detour to a barracks a few yards from the border, where hundreds of fit first-line American and Korean soldiers were resting, waiting. DaMarcus Beasley shook his head. He had no idea it was this tense.
Young South Korean journalists seemed as touched as the Americans. They had been raised with hopes of peace, by parents with long memories they did not necessarily share. Why burden the next generation with fears of war? The young South Koreans shook their heads, as innocent as the Americans.
* * *
The Americans stored away their images of the DMZ. They had three matches coming up against Portugal, South Korea, and Poland.
A great source of talent, Portugal had played in the World Cup only twice, finishing third with Eusebio in 1966 and winning one of three matches in 1986. Eleven of the team’s twenty-three players earned their living elsewhere in Europe, and twelve played in the very respectable Portuguese league. The star was Luís Figo, who had won the Ballon d’Or as the best player in Europe in 2000 and was now one of the Galácticos of Real Madrid.
Eight World Cups Page 18