re: Landon Donovan Appreciation Thread

quote:

---

And so if Donovan had won some kind of cosmic lottery, well shite man, at least he could be kind of happy about it. He was traveling the world and playing the game we loved when most of us were buried in spreadsheets by day and jerking off into socks by night. He had the life a lot of us dreamed and strived for, and he never seemed to just stop for a second, and bask in it.

In January 2010, he finally ventured to Europe again. By then, USMNT players like Dempsey and Michael Bradley had already acquitted themselves in foreign leagues, and others like Fabian Johnson were following their lead.

He went to England on a brief loan at Everton, almost as if to prove to himself that he could play in the world's top leagues. He could, and scored twice in 10 appearances. That summer was the World Cup in South Africa.

The Americans drew England and Slovenia, and needed a win against Algeria in the final match of the group stage to advance. In stoppage time, it came.

The entire country went into hysterics. People cried, collapsed, hugged, kissed, sang, and cheered. Who else but Donovan, the greatest American player of all time, would be there at the end to score the most iconic American goal of all time?

The USMNT would lose a heartbreaker to Ghana in the next match, but Donovan had become a bona fide American hero, a legend. He won the MLS Cup with Beckham in 2011, dipped his toe back into the Everton squad for a loan the following winter, and then repeated as an MLS champion in 2012. Then he was gone.

He decided he'd had enough, and so he walked away from it all. He walked away from the Galaxy, and he walked away from the men's national team. He was tired, he explained, so he took time to himself four months after the MLS Cup. He missed three World Cup qualifying matches, and USMNT manager Jürgen Klinsmann, who'd taken over in 2011, said Donovan would have to play his way back in the squad.

No one knew if he even wanted to return to the squad. He was only 31, but had played professionally nearly half his life. Fourteen years of soccer, and 14 years of carrying a team, of dragging a nation into the present, can be a special kind of torture. It can take a toll on a man, grind him down.

He went on a sabbatical, and for the first time ever, Donovan was finally out of the limelight, away from the cameras. It looked like the legend was walking off into the sunset. When photos of Donovan popped up on Twitter in February 2013, he was in Cambodia, playing soccer with locals. He looked happy.

He came back last year, but he was immediately at odds with Klinsmann. He got his chance in the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Klinsmann brought much of the USMNT B Team, the guys trying to get in the 23-man roster for 2014 in Brazil. Donovan, the greatest player ever, didn't belong there. He played like it.

Donovan was unstoppable, and finished the tournament with five goals and seven assists in six matches, and took away the award for best player. It was the greatest we've ever seen him, and he finished the tournament as the only American player to record 50 career goals and assists each for the country. USMNT won the Gold Cup, and the question suddenly was not whether Donovan could play in the starting 11, but where was he going to fit.

But that was the last we saw of Landon Donovan, superstar. He's battled injury since, and this MLS season, he has yet to score a goal for Los Angeles. When the USMNT drew a difficult group and Klinsmann signed a contract extension last winter, we started to raise eyebrows. It wasn't inconceivable that Klinsmann was planning for the future. We did again when Julian Green, an 18-year-old prodigy winger and the ostensible Future chose to represent the United States over Germany. Maybe, the conspiracy theorists among us thought, some kind of deal had been made?

Still, that felt like crazy talk. But last night, when Klinsmann released the World Cup roster, Donovan was nowhere to be found.

Klinsmann called it the toughest decision of his coaching career.

"I have to make the decisions what is good today for this group going into Brazil," Klinsmann said. "And there I just think that the other guys right now are a little bit ahead of him."

If this explanation felt dubious and hollow, it's because it made no sense. Donovan had lost a step and gained a bit of weight, sure, but he was still one of the best five or six players on the team. Klinsmann, meanwhile, had elected to bring Green, young defenders John Brooks and DeAndre Yedlin, old poacher Chris Wondolowski, and Brad fricking Davis. These guys are going to Brazil for a vacation. If they're not going to play, and if Donovan's not going to play, why not bring the greatest, most important American soccer player ever?

We don't know why Donovan wasn't granted one final lap with the USMNT. Theories abound. Maybe, somehow, he doesn't fit alongside Jozy Altidore and Dempsey and Bradley and Johnson. Maybe he's hurt. Maybe Klinsmann doesn't want him on the bench. Maybe Klinsmann just wanted to move on.

Whatever the case, it feels like something had been taken from us, as if we were all witness to a crime. In sports, where athletes are ridden like racehorses and then discarded when they're no longer of use, surely he'd earned the right to leave the field on his own feet. But this was of a piece with the Donovan saga, too. He was always measured in negative space, by his supposed lack of steel, by his truancy from the top-flight soccer leagues, by everything people presumed he couldn't do. It seems both unfair and perfectly fitting for him to go out in this way, as the great national absence.

---