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Soccer News, World Cup News | March 14, 2010
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English Fans Find an Unlikely Love for a Yank
By Chuck Culpepper
March 14, 2010
LIVERPOOL, England — Beside the gallant city park in perhaps the world’s most zealous sports neighborhood, an unanticipated love has sprouted this winter and ripened into wistfulness this weekend.
Sighs abound because the dreamboat tourist must go home to California by Monday. The air brims with remarks like “Don’t want him to go” and “If we could get him here permanently” and “I can’t picture him out of the team, to be honest.” Around a stadium tucked snugly into narrow roads of row houses and pubs and fish-and-chips stands, it is trendy to root openly for a distant workers’ strike on the faint hope that it could enable his return.
In the two details that make this curious, the lovelorn happen to be some of the most informed, exacting fans on Earth — those of the English Premier League — and the object happens to be an American soccer player who is not a goalkeeper.
Landon Donovan, from that soccer guppy the United States, joined the 132-year-old club Everton in January on a 10-week loan from Donovan’s primary team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, that was to end this weekend. At the time not even the instigator of the arrangement, Everton’s manager, David Moyes, foresaw the glee that would ensue. Trained eyes did not envision the impact of Donovan’s “coruscating pace down the flanks,” as Greg O’Keeffe wrote in The Liverpool Daily Echo.
For all his record-setting scoring and assisting for the United States national team, the 28-year-old Donovan had not wowed many in his previous stints in the German Bundesliga. And in the English bastions of soccer wisdom known as pubs, fans, when rarely asked, can flash a knack for sipping and sneering simultaneously while pooh-poohing American soccer for its ostensibly laggard pace and physicality.
Moyes “seems to have mistaken Landon Donovan for someone who can hack it in European football,” sneered one unmistakably knowledgeable writer in The Guardian, an assertion barely noticed and hardly outlandish. Peter Howard, an Everton fan who witnessed his first Everton match in 1952, thought Moyes would employ Donovan “sparingly” and said, “I thought he’d be slower than he is.” Mark Tolond, an Everton fan for all 48 of his years, thought Donovan came “as a cover” for “four or five players injured.” Anthony Golding, 22, standing alongside a rack of Donovan T-shirts in the Everton merchandise store, said, “I thought he’d be a fringe player.”
Plugged into a strong roster for 13 heady matches since, Donovan has propelled a seeing-eye corner kick for an assist in a stirring win over kingpin Chelsea and flourished in a stirring win over kingpin Manchester United. He has gone airborne courtesy of the 19-year-old Everton prodigy Jack Rodwell, who hoisted the smallish Donovan for homage from a rousing home crowd after Donovan’s goal on March 7 in a 5-1 win against Hull City. He has elicited routine chants of “U.S.A.! which, according to fans, doubles as a dig across the park toward the other major stadium just a stroll away, that of the colossus Liverpool, where fans roil in ire with that club’s American owners.
For an autograph signing, Donovan’s presence coaxed a line that zigzagged through the merchandise store, snaked out the door and hogged about 300 yards of sidewalk. He has triggered Facebook pages like “Keep Landon Donovan at Everton!!” (10,240 fans by Saturday) and “Evertonians Will Never Forget Landon Donovan!! (1,867 fans). He has thrived while donning the beloved No. 9 shirt worn by a lineage of Everton luminaries beginning with the 1920s and Dixie Dean, whose muscular statue outside the stadium wears an Everton scarf.
“How quickly he has settled in has surprised me,” Moyes said of Donovan early and, in variations, often.
And in that common assessment, Donovan has tweaked the image of the United States as a country that needs to use its hands to excel. Its exports to England have entailed mostly a stash of outstanding goalkeepers (like Brad Friedel, Marcus Hahnemann and Everton’s Tim Howard) and a sprinkling of credible outfield players, including John Harkes in the 1990s, Claudio Reyna in the 2000s and, of late, mainstays like Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey at Fulham.
From the first moments in a well-reviewed debut match at Arsenal in North London on Jan. 9, Donovan materialized with Premier League pace. “He really impressed me from the first whistle,” Tolond said. “When we got the ball, he was taking on their fullback,” a tack English fans adore with uncommon relish. “He was dangerous.” By February, he “took apart” the elite Chelsea defender Ashley Cole, according to Tolond, before Cole broke his ankle in an honest collision with Donovan.
Everton has had strong finishes of sixth, fifth and fifth the past three seasons, and Donovan’s charges helped lend the offense a fresh dimension of precious space as Everton elbowed into 9th place, from 12th. His distaste for trepidation made a six-decade viewer like Peter Howard marvel that Donovan “takes players on,” that he is “not frightened” and that, in loftiest praise, “To me, he’s an old-fashioned English winger.”
Fans have forgiven even his howling miss from two yards on Feb. 28 at Tottenham. Golding said: “I can’t picture him out of the team, to be honest. He’s made his mark.”
Donovan, while asserting in February that previous European tours found him unready “technically, tactically, mentally and physically,” said he studied and prepared utterly this time. “It’s been really great,” he said to reporters, “and I can’t imagine many players in the world, let alone Americans, can say they have played against and beaten Chelsea and Manchester United in the space of 10 days.”
So as the love-in blossomed across winter, so did a wish that Donovan could remain beyond the March 15 mandate. Moyes pronounced himself “keen to keep Landon,” judged Donovan “keen to stay” and concluded that “all parties are keen.” Donovan stated a wish for an extra month.
Los Angeles Manager Bruce Arena stated a wish to honor the contract for a Galaxy season scheduled to begin on March 27, two days into the Major League Soccer season. Evertonians dreamed of Donovan on a wing opposite the gifted and freshly healed Spaniard Mikel Arteta. And then, M.L.S. players last Thursday authorized a strike by March 25 barring a deal with management.
As Donovan’s 10 rambunctious weeks found their curtain with a substitute turn Saturday in a 2-2 draw at Birmingham City, and as he went over to Everton’s sliver of supporters for a farewell, and as the price of Donovan T-shirts here dipped to £4.99 ($7.50) from £9.99 ($15) at closing time, fans over here have taken unusual interest in labor relations over there.
“All’s we want is this strike to continue!” Peter Howard said, loosing a huge laugh. “Till the end of the season would be better!
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Injured Beckham May Miss World Cup
Reuters
March 14, 2010
MILAN, IT — David Beckham's World Cup hopes looked to be all but over after the England midfielder went off with a suspected ruptured Achilles tendon late in AC Milan's 1-0 Serie A win over Chievo on Sunday.
Beckham was getting ready to kick a ball unchallenged when he suddenly pulled up and signalled to the bench despite second-placed Milan having used all their substitutes.
Beckham told the San Siro bench "It's broken, it's broken" as he came off. Team mates said he was in tears in the dressing room.
"When the Achilles tendon goes you feel it straight away," Milan coach Leonardo told reporters after his side moved one point behind stuttering leaders Inter Milan with 10 games left.
"The injury to David is upsetting. This injury lets me enjoy the win less."
Milan officials told reporters he would fly to Finland as soon as possible to be operated on by a specialist.
The 34-year-old, on loan at Milan from Los Angeles Galaxy chiefly to try to safeguard his England squad place for the World Cup, will now almost certainly not be fit for the tournament in South Africa which starts on June 11.
Television analysts said Achilles injuries can take up to three months to heal, sometimes as much as five months.
England are well-covered on the right wing with Theo Walcott, Shaun Wright-Phillips and James Milner among the players able to play there. Tottenham Hotspur's Aaron Lennon is currently injured.
Beckham, a former captain who played at the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cups, is England's most capped outfield player with 115 appearances.
He suffered a broken metatarsal in his foot in 2002 and was not fully fit for the 2002 World Cup, when England went out in the quarter-finals.
Milan, bidding for their first scudetto since 2004, will also miss his crossing ability although he has been far less effective in this loan spell compared to his first stint at the San Siro last year.
A dejected-looking Beckham, who left the San Siro on crutches to applause and kisses from club officials, was due to return to Galaxy after the World Cup.
He gave no comment to reporters.
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