Landon Donovan: A Complicated Figure, A Much Clearer Legacy

Landon Donovan will play his 157th and final game for the United States National Team Friday night in East Hartford, Connecticut, and then ride off on a surfboard into the soccer heavens. That’s not exactly true. Donovan’s soccer career ends whenever the 2014 Los Angeles Galaxy season concludes, but his international career ends following his goodbye tonight vs. Ecuador at Rentschler Field. A surfboard probably will not be involved.

The National Team without Donovan, 32, almost feels like an impossibility, since he’s been — arguably — its most important, if not best player for almost the entire 21st century right up until this June when Jurgen Klinsmann opted to leave him home for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. For most Americans under, say, 25 or 30 Donovan is the National Team save for his surf hiatus in Cambodia in 2013 which turned into a self-imposed six-month sabbatical from the sport.

Rehashing the Klinsmann/Donovan feud doesn’t seem all that productive given tonight is the former captain’s final international. That won’t stop fans playing the ‘What If’ game and assuming Donovan would have once again rode to the National Team’s rescue in Brazil like he did four years earlier. There are probably some misguided souls out there — hi dad! — who’ll forever believe if Donovan went to the 2014 World Cup, the U.S. would have won the tournament.

Thanks to the U.S. Soccer Federation’s smart decision to say goodbye to Donovan with the testimonial he richly deserves, the final image of him in a U.S shirt will be a happy, positive, triumphant one — regardless of a tweet Klinsmann’s teenage son wrote in May.

So much has been written about Donovan over the last five months, there’s almost not much left to say that hasn’t already been covered — statistically it’s hard to trump this compilation from U.S. Soccer on his career. (25 percent of his international goals coming after the 75th minute is damn impressive.) Perhaps the only little nugget I can add that’s been overlooked in the American soccer-sphere is that the influence of Donovan at the club level in MLS turned otherwise journeymen forwards Brian Ching and Edson Buddle into World Cup-worthy players.

Like anyone else, my personal relationship as a fan watching Donovan from a couch afar wasn’t always the love-fest its been the last couple months. Like a lot of immature people, I whined and groaned about Donovan forcing an exit from Bayer Leverkausen to return to MLS circa 2005, regardless of his star-making performance during the 2002 World Cup which included a goal vs. Mexico to help create the legend of Dos a Cero and paved the way to the U.S.’s narrow 1-0 loss in the quarterfinals to Germany. The dismissive “Landycakes” label might have been used, without thinking how difficult it would have been for me — only six months older than Donovan — moving to industrial Germany, alone as a teenager.

In 2006, Donovan’s name might as well have been a dirty word for his listless, forgettable showing in Germany when the feeling in America — I’ve got the covers of Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, etc in a shoebox somewhere in storage to back me up — was that he’d take the proverbial sports leap forward and lead the team to untold new heights. (Little did anyone consider the reality of just how difficult it is for an unheralded nation to get further than the World Cup quarterfinals.) Sitting in bus in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, I could only wonder what happened and why the progression from 2002 didn’t happen.

Sports, even though we’re not supposed to acknowledge that”narrative” things still happen, have a funny way of working themselves out. At the 2010 World Cup, Donovan, much like Lloyd Christmas, totally redeemed himself by scoring important goals late in the games vs. Slovenia and Algeria. Everyone still talks about the last-second goal vs. Algeria that clinched passage into the Round of 16, but the Slovenia goal from the previous World Cup group game sticks with me more.

Call it the moment Donovan finally told the last vestige of his long-standing haters to go pound sand, blasting the ball by Samir Handanovic from an acute angle.

Donovan vs. Algeria in the 91st minute gave U.S. Soccer its moment. Sure it was only a goal in the World Cup group stage. Yes, the U.S. lost in the Round of 16 vs. Ghana a few days later, but that moment reverberated. The tenor and conversation of soccer in America changed thanks to Donovan. Maybe thanks to social media and a younger generation of soccer fans we’d have seen thousands swarm to Soldier Field in Chicago to watch the U.S. play during the 2014 World Cup without Donovan’s goal, but the moment from South Africa truly once and for all made Americans want to root for the National Team together and with one voice.

Again, this isn’t winning the World Cup or making soccer the No. 1 sport in the country or anything like that, but that confluence of events in Pretoria on June 23, 2010 capped off by Donovan is indeed a moment that every U.S. Soccer fan alive at the time will always remember. You might not be able to put goosebumps on a mantle or inside a trophy case, but I’d still like to believe we’re not so collectively cynical to dismiss their value entirely.

Aside from that moment in South Africa, maybe what will stand out the most about Donovan as the years pass and the goal memory becomes a little hazier is his self-awareness as a star athlete. If you’re a self-aware person you know it can be both a blessing and a curse, which it was for Donovan for most of his career. Donovan spent the last decade or so knowing he was supposed to the guy, the man, the posterboy, the role model, the template, the everything for U.S. Soccer. Although he certainly knew this was thrust upon him, he never quite embraced it — it wasn’t in his personality to do so. With Donovan it always felt like he knew his own weaknesses and shortcomings almost as much as his strengths.

A lot of athletes placed into this position, with the FIFA box covers, the Gatorade endorsements, the Hollywood actress wife, etc. would let it go to their heads. Donovan’s teammate on the 2002 World Cup team — Clint Mathis — seemed more suited for superstardom than Donovan ever did. If anything Donovan went the other way and tried to hide from the spotlight. For that, it’s worth applauding Donovan who always stuck to his guns and did what he felt was best for him to do, regardless of whether or not it fit the public idea of what “Landon Donovan” stood for. When everyone called him a washout and a byproduct of MLS, he stunned the American soccer community and went to Everton, briefly, on loan where he thrived for 10 games during the 2009-10 EPL season. Who else but Donovan is going to repeatedly mock his own World Cup snub — and tragic water fountain pose — in the wake of the Klinsmann decision? Or drop everything during the height of World Cup qualifying to take a surf sabbatical in Cambodia because it suited him?

Another Gatorade pitchman, Derek Jeter, won plaudits last month for a commercial featuring Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” The tune applies to Donovan, if not more. U.S. Soccer will never produce a superstar quite like him.

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Let’s close with a quick list of where Donovan stands among American soccer players. He’s the easy part of the list, at No.1. After Donovan there’s a good dozen or so players who you could make a compelling case to rank arbitrarily below him.

Spoiler alert: he’s No. 1. For the purposes of this brief Top 5, I’m only considering players post-Paul Caligiuri goal vs. Trinidad & Tobago in 1989 — not to overlook the Walter Bahrs but simply because I’m not qualified to judge the pre-“modern era” of U.S. Soccer. This list will also sway much more toward international performance than club career.

An Arbitrary Top 5 Players in U.S. Soccer history:

Honorable mention: Cobi Jones, DaMarcus Beasley, Steve Cherundolo, Brian McBride, Eric Wynalda, John Harkes, Joe-Max Moore, Thomas Dooley, Brad Friedel, Kasey Keller, Tim Howard, Alexi Lalas, Marcelo Balboa, Earnie Stewart, Paul Caliguiri.

No. 5: Eddie Pope — Pope’s best moment in soccer is scoring the winning goal in the first MLS champions game. His international career is somewhat over-shadowed, however the fact there isn’t an indelible Eddie Pope moment is probably one of the best compliments you can pay a central defender.

No. 4: Clint Dempsey — Wherever you slot Dempsey on a list like this is going to draw reactions. Dempsey is the only American to score at three World Cups and release numerous freestyle mix tapes.

No. 3: Claudio Reyna — Reyna’s legacy, at least with the USMNT, would be a lot different if he played five years later when there was more attention for soccer in America. Reyna was strong as both a holding or attacking player. Whenever he was healthy enough to wear the captain’s armband the team was better for it, yet one quirky stat sticks out with me: the U.S. only won one World Cup game (2002 vs. Mexico) started by Reyna.

No. 2: Tab Ramos — Like Reyna, Ramos might have been a player before his time for the U.S. A technical, gifted central midfielder is what Klinsmann is continually seeking for the current incarnation of the National Team. Again, this is an arbitrary list but in the early-to-mid 90s Ramos looked like a cut above everyone else. Shame injuries derailed his potential.

No. 1: Landon Donovan — Go, Go USA.