“People miss the point,” Landon Donovan once said of the way his unpopular career decisions have been judged. “I just want to be happy. If I’m happy, I can play with anybody in the world.”
Donovan said these exact words while sitting in a sushi joint in southern California before the 2006 World Cup in Germany, when he’d moved back from Bayer Leverkusen for a second time to sign a long-term deal with the Los Angeles Galaxy.
He would say similar things over the next eight years. When he signed and re-signed with the Galaxy, passed on other opportunities to play abroad, even after a successful couple of loan stints with Everton, where he showed, yes, he could play in the Premier League. And again, when he decided after the 2013 Major League Soccer season that he was going to take a mental health break from the game. A sabbatical that didn’t sit well with a lot of folks. Eventually people got the point. Donovan was going to do what he wanted to do with his playing career.
Because it was his career, not someone else’s.
In many ways, that’s the legacy of the greatest American soccer player of all time. Maybe he could have done more with his talent. Maybe he got the most out of it. Judge away.
He just wanted to be happy.
The end result is pretty impressive. On the club level, he won six MLS Cups, two with the San Jose Earthquakes and four with the Galaxy. He retired after the 2015 season as the league’s all-time leading goal scorer with 144 goals.
As an international, he was capped 157 times and scored 57 goals and was credited with 57 assists, making him his country’s all-time leading goal scorer and assist man. He scored five times in the World Cup, which also puts him on top of that list among US internationals.
He was the main attacking player on US teams that:
- Advanced to the quarter-final of the 2002 World Cup.
- Advanced to the final of the 2009 Confederations Cup.
- Advanced to the second round of the 2010 World Cup.
Of course, that last accomplishment was achieved when he scored what was arguably the most dramatic goal in US national team history, a last-gasp winner against Algeria that saw the US through. So thrilling was that goal – it set off coast-to-coast celebrations at viewing parties during what was the first World Cup captured by cellphone videos that went viral – that it often gets overlooked that his goal against Slovenia in the US’s second group match was also huge.
Without the goal against Slovenia, which helped the Americans erase a two-goal half-time deficit – the game against Algeria would’ve been meaningless.
A lot of Donovan’s achievements get overlooked, probably because American fans will probably always wonder what might have been if Donovan had followed a different career path.
Certainly, they’re left to wonder if Donovan would have played in one more World Cup had he not decided he needed to take his sabbatical in the year that preceded Brazil 2014. When US manager Jürgen Klinsmann did not pick Donovan to be part of his 23-man roster for Brazil, many felt the decision could be traced to Donovan’s decision to take a break from the game, even as Klinsmann said it had only to do with the player’s form and fitness at the time of the decision.
That Donovan voiced his shock and disappointment at Klinsmann’s decision only fueled the sentiment. “Not only did I think I’d make the team,” Donovan said. “I thought I’d start.”
It was a bitter, sad ending for a player who had done so much. It was probably even sadder because it also seemed to divide a fanbase.
Some felt he got screwed. Some felt he screwed himself.
Flashing back to that sushi restaurant in 2006, here’s more of what Donovan had to say. It was an early glimpse into the mindset that would ultimately define him.
“You know,” he told a writer. “I could be (in Europe) and I could be successful. But I would never come close to being as happy as I am here. No matter how much better it might make me, it would never be worth it. I don’t have to deal with all the BS. In Germany I saw guys, Bulgarians, Croatians, Brazilians, who would come to training, go home and just be miserable. They’d have nothing to do. I would never want to be that way. There’s more to life than soccer.”
So, the guy who did more than any American player ever – setting a bar that will be hard for any other attacking player to match – can also say he did it his way.
Whether you like it or not.
- This article was corrected on Friday July 24. USA reached the final of the 2009 Confederations Cup, not the semi-final.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion