by Tim Howard
We could use a little more of that in America—a little more scrap, a little more pickup, a little less structure. U.S. Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Development Academy are trying to change the travel team culture today, and I’m glad about that. The truth is, until we get that right, I’m not sure we’ll ever become the nation of soccer champions that we all want to be.
When I was 13, I was selected for the Olympic Development Training Program, ODP, which at that time helped identify high-caliber young players for international competition. That became my pathway to the Youth National team—first the Under-15s, then the Under-17s, then the U-20s.
I was proud to put on the USA jersey, but the pride I felt at the time was more personal—more ego—than it was patriotic.
All of us had been the best in our towns . . . then our counties . . . then our states . . . then our regions. Being here, at a national youth team training camp, was confirmation: we were now the best in the country.
That felt pretty damned sweet. Especially for a kid with TS who sometimes got laughed at by his peers.
I didn’t know it then, but on the other side of the globe, kids half my age were entering soccer youth academies—hypercompetitive talent factories. Life in these academies was—and is still—intense and regimented, devoid of the joy one generally associates with childhood. Academy scouts scour every nook and cranny of the soccer landscape, hoping to find a prodigy who might have the potential to someday make the senior team.
When they identify a prospect, they scoop him up, then move him into the high-stakes academy, where he eats, drinks, and breathes soccer. He often lives away from home, training night and day. He goes to school on a modified schedule.
He works with professional coaches and trainers and nutritionists and physiotherapists. He is drilled and evaluated; his progress tracked in thick dossiers.
If he can last, he watches most of his friends get cut and disappear. He watches new prospects arrive and compete for his spot, so he works harder. If he can survive this Darwinian process, if he can withstand the pressures and the demand for excellence, he’ll be ready for a professional career by the time he leaves.
Someday, I’d be competing with these guys.
I didn’t have some fancy European incubator of talent. But what I did have turned out to be every bit as valuable:
First, I had Mulch driving me. Second, I had a rough-and-tumble world that was filled with every kind of sport, often with kids who were older, bigger, and faster—completely out of my league. Last, I had this weird brain that hyperfocused on sports, pushing me to do things again and again.
It was like I had my own little private soccer academy.
“IT WILL TAKE A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD ME BACK”
The world was astounded when FIFA announced that the 1994 World Cup would be held in the United States. Sure, the U.S. had the resources, but America was not a soccer country.
Truth is, it was pretty much the only non-soccer country on the planet.
The folks at FIFA wanted to change that by giving us a taste of the world’s greatest sporting event. But they required something in return: in exchange for our hosting the World Cup, we had to launch a major professional soccer league.
Both the 1994 World Cup and the league that grew out of it would have a profound influence on my life.
I’d always followed all the local pro teams, particularly the New York Giants and New York Knicks. But soccer was a different world—played professionally only on faraway soils, seen on television rarely and even then, mostly in highlights.
When my friends and I played pickup sports, we never imagined ourselves as soccer players. We fantasized about being Patrick Ewing or John Starks, or Phil Simms or Lawrence Taylor—players in the NBA or NFL.
But the World Cup changed all that. My club and high school teammates and I buzzed about the marquee matchups. We watched them together on TV. We cheered our hearts out for the USA.
Tony Meola, the goalkeeper I’d followed in ’90, was back, as was midfielder Tab Ramos. Now these Jersey guys were taking on the world on their home turf.
I went to a World Cup game in California with the Youth National team. It was that infamous match against Colombia in which Andrés Escobar, one of their defenders, scored an own goal for which he was later murdered back in his country. I knew the rest of the world took soccer seriously, but I didn’t realize how much until I heard the news of Escobar’s death.
Mulch was scouting that game, and he sat next to me in the Rose Bowl. During the match, he kept pointing at Meola. “That should be you,” he said. “Someday, I want it to be you out there.”
And to make sure that I understood, he looked me in the eye.
“One of these days, that’s going to be you.”
The next year, I made the World Youth Championship team—the Under-17 equivalent of the World Cup. The tournament, held in Ecuador, fell at exactly the same time that my club team, the Central Jersey Cosmos, would be going to Regionals.
Some parents of the other team members were outraged that their star keeper might not go to the Regionals. They confronted Mulch. “You’re not going to let Tim go to the world championships, are you?”
It wasn’t even a choice, Mulch told them: of course I’d go to the world championships.
They were furious and approached my mom. They used words like selfish. Shirking one’s responsibility. Abandoning one’s team.
Mom watched them wag their fingers and fold their arms over their chests.
You don’t understand, she felt like shouting. You don’t understand, because your kids have options. They can go to college, because you can pay for it. If they struggle academically, you get them tutors. But that’s not our reality. Tim gets C’s and D’s, even with summer school. He can’t sit in a classroom for more than a few minutes, and I’m not sure he’ll ever hack it in college. My greatest hope for him—maybe my only hope for him right now—is that somehow, someday, he’ll be able to use his athletic skills to pay his rent, and maybe make a car payment.
Can’t you understand that? Can’t you understand how important the world championships are to his being able to do that?
They couldn’t. We were from different worlds.
I went to that world championship.
U.S. Soccer gave us ten dollars a day for spending money, and they hammered home the idea that we were representing our nation, that this was an honor that they could take away in the blink of an eye.
We lost all three games in the group stage, to Japan, Ecuador, and Ghana, but it was a valuable experience for three reasons.
First, I had a taste for soccer on the international stage.
Second, I had a new appreciation for all that my mom had given me. We’d seen tremendous poverty there, shantytowns perched on hillsides. I had thought that my family was poor. Suddenly I understood how lucky we were.
Third, I had more than $200 in my pocket. I hadn’t spent any of the money U.S. soccer had provided.
I gave it to my mom so she could use it for groceries and clothes.
Meanwhile, my TS symptoms continued.
Sometimes in class, I heard kids whisper. Watch Tim. He’s going to jerk his head.
Watch Tim, he’s going to twitch.
To spite them, I’d focus all my attention on not having a tic. At the front of the classroom, the teacher was rambling on about quadratic equations, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy pretending that the urge wasn’t welling up inside of me until I was about to burst. Eventually, when I couldn’t hold back any longer, I jumped up and went to the bathroom. There, I let loose, relieved to be left in peace to twitch and cough, move around and make noise freely.
But when I trained with the Youth National Team, I got to do more than step out of class for a few minutes. I missed school for weeks at a stretch, several times a year as I traveled the globe.
These weren’t glamorous trips. They were as grueling mentally as they were physically.
&nbs
p; It’s not merely that we traveled in bare-bones style—during one trip to Chile, for example, it was so cold we slept in our USA Soccer parkas and still couldn’t stay warm.
It’s also that we were under the microscope. The coaches and administrators scrutinized our every move—what we wore, what we ate and drank, how we spoke to each other. You could tell they were sizing up our potential to represent the nation as senior players one day.
I especially clicked with the guys from California. I’d grown up surrounded by Type-A East Coasters, so I marveled at the Cali boys’ laid-back, casual vibe. Although they were in constant motion on the field, they otherwise never seemed to be in a hurry.
By the time I got to the U-20s, I’d made some real friends among them. I liked Nick Rimando, a fellow keeper who was a jolly prankster in the locker room, but reliable and solid on the field. I also liked a kid named Carlos Bocanegra. Carlos was a pretty boy—a Tom Cruise look-alike with hoop earrings and big baggy jeans. He was so mellow, I sometimes wanted to check to see if he had a pulse.
Carlos would have been easy to dismiss if he hadn’t been such a powerful defender on the field.
In the hotel, Nick and Carlos and I pulled our fair share of stupid pranks—we filled garbage cans with water, leaned them up against other players’ doors, then knocked and ran. By the time they opened their door—water tumbling into their room—we’d be cracking up down the hall.
On one trip, Nick and I almost got ourselves kicked off the youth team. We were in Düsseldorf, Germany, staying in a little cottage. We snuck out after curfew to wander around town, looking for the party scene. We didn’t find it, but it was exhilarating to be roaming a foreign country in the middle of the night. When we finally returned, at 4 a.m., we couldn’t find our way back into the cottage. We tried to pry open every window, even climbed up on the roof and attempted to drop down through a skylight. Mercifully, we eventually got back in and managed to pretend we’d been sleeping all along.
If we’d been caught back then, who knows if they’d have ever let us play for the U.S. senior team.
I had great school friends, too. I forged lifelong friendships with my buddies from the basketball and soccer teams.
Every weekend, I slept over at the home of my best friend, Steve Senior. One night, when I was 16, I told Steve that my brother had come home with a tattoo on his leg—a big panther.
“It’s the most badass thing,” I said. “I want one of my own.”
“You should do it,” Steve urged. “That would be so cool.”
A few weeks later, I walked into a craphole tattoo parlor in a sketchy neighborhood.
Since you have to be 18 to get a tattoo in New Jersey, I did the only logical thing: I borrowed Chris’s ID, waved that thing around as if it were my own, and asked for a tattoo of a Superman sign, with the name HOWARD, below my bicep.
Walking into the studio, I’d felt like the coolest guy in the world. Then the needle hit my skin, and it hurt like crazy.
I couldn’t sit still through the pain. I squirmed and jumped and grimaced and squeezed my eyes tight so tears wouldn’t roll out.
The artist was a big, mean hairy guy in a black tank top.
“Sit still, kid,” he commanded. “I’m not going to finish if you keep jumping around like that. You’ll have a half-tat. Is that what you want? A half-tat?”
In school the next day, I didn’t tell anyone that I’d wanted to cry like a baby in that chair. I simply flexed my arms, showing it off—my Superman tat—to Steve and all my other basketball buddies, as if I were the bravest guy on the planet.
I knew of exactly one other person on this earth with TS: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the point guard for the Denver Nuggets. I’d watched him whoop it up on the basketball court, sometimes earning himself technicals for his outbursts. I’d watched him startle his teammates or opponents with his grunting.
But I’d also seen him dazzle people on the court, nailing one three-pointer after another. In interviews, Abdul-Rauf described touching things in ritual patterns. His obsessive drive to make everything feel exactly right. Sometimes, that meant tapping or jerking his head. Sometimes it meant putting on his clothes in a precise order. Sometimes it meant practicing his skills over and over, until he led the league in free-throw percentage.
It confused people. A major sports figure with Tourette? How could anyone be sure he wouldn’t have an episode at the wrong moment and cost his team the game?
I understood. I understood the way the symptoms faded in those critical moments.
If anything, Abdul-Rauf said, his TS helped him. It drove him.
To a high school kid with TS, an aspiring athlete myself, Abdul-Rauf was an inspiration. If this guy can do it, I thought, maybe I can, too.
Mulch continued to push me on the field. He never left me alone. I’d stand in goal and he’d make me tell him what I was seeing.
He was my guide to the tactical. When the ball comes in from the left, you look to the right; that’s where you’re going to find your open players.
He was my guide to the physical. Feet closer together. Drop down faster. Now get up, that ball is coming right back.
He was my guide to the mental. Let that ball come to you, Tim. Don’t rush toward it.
He was my guide to the practical. Ball goes over the post? Don’t go get it right away. First, take a minute, talk to your defenders, use the moment as a mini-time-out.
While some keepers are tempted to punt the ball down the field, particularly in the final minutes of the game—do anything to send it as far away as possible—Mulch taught me to think. Throw the ball if you can. When you throw it, you have control over where it goes. Send it right to your teammate’s feet.
If I didn’t get it exactly right—if, say, I threw it to a player and he gained control with his chest, or his thigh—Mulch made me do it all over again.
“That was a crap throw, Tim. Get it to his feet this time.”
Major League Soccer began its play in 1996, the year I turned seventeen.
In those frenzied, heady start-up days, the MLS was part professional league, part three-ring circus. Plenty of aspects were made up on the fly, like some of the goofy-sounding team names—the Dallas Burn and the San Jose Clash, or the clunky New York/New Jersey MetroStars. There were some bizarre rules meant to appeal to American audiences. Official time was kept on a clock that counted backward, not forward. No game could end in a tie; there was a shootout to determine the winner. Salaries for most players were hardly what you would think of as major league. The minimum salary, $24,000, didn’t go a long way in a city like New York.
But to a soccer-loving kid with big dreams, MLS gave me a tangible goal.
ESPN and ABC agreed to televise games and a few of the earliest matches drew large audiences at the Rose Bowl and Giants Stadium. All the big names from the U.S. team at the 1994 World Cup signed on, and a few international stars from the World Cup, like Carlos Valderrama, Jorge Campos, and Marco Etcheverry did too. My old hero, Roberto Donadoni, joined the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, as did Tab Ramos and Tony Meola.
Then Mulch was hired as their goalkeeping coach—as well as for the New Jersey Imperials, which was like a minor-league team associated with the MLS club.
I felt my own world colliding with the one I’d only dared imagine.
We were getting to the end of high school, and I had some decisions to make. I’d had some interest from colleges, local powerhouses like Rutgers and St. John’s. Some dangled promises of basketball or soccer scholarships. College was the obvious way to go, the path that everyone around me hoped to follow. My friends from the soccer and basketball teams were taking their SATs and applying to schools all over the country. My youth World Cup buddies Nick Rimando and Carlos Bocanegra were both heading to UCLA to play soccer.
Shouldn’t I be considering that route, too?
But I could barely sit through my high school classes. How could I possibly keep up with college studies while devoting myself
to the soccer team? Why would I even want to try?
Why subject myself to four years of being distracted from the one thing I truly cared about?
One night, Mulch sat down with me and my mom.
“Listen,” he said. “Tim can get started professionally by playing for the New Jersey Imperials.”
He made sure my mom understood: the Imperials weren’t the MLS—they were more like the soccer equivalent of the Durham Bulls.
“He’ll get to play a lot, and if all goes well, he can move up to the MetroStars next season. But it means skipping college . . . Mrs. Howard, you’ve got to be okay with that.”
I already knew what Mom would say.
“Tim,” she said, “I want you to have a complete life. That means you’ve got to make your own decisions.”
I didn’t even hesitate. I wanted to give soccer everything I had.
I turned to Mulch. “Let’s go pro.”
So that was the plan. But even if I could make it to the MLS after a year, there was no established career path for an American soccer player. It wasn’t like the NBA or the NFL.
I’d probably never earn more than my grandfather did at Johnson & Johnson. It was possible I’d never even come close.
This was a total leap of faith.
I played so many games during those years, I couldn’t count them if I tried.
But there’s one that goes down in local folklore, and it wasn’t even a soccer game.
North Brunswick’s biggest basketball rival is St. Joseph’s High School. My senior year, St. Joe’s had this big-time player, a sophomore that everyone kept talking about: Jay Williams. Later, Jay would play for Duke and be selected the number two pick in the NBA draft by the Chicago Bulls. My North Brunswick basketball team had a good run that year—good enough that we were heading to the county championships. Our opponents? St. Joe’s.
I would guard Jay.
Today there’s some mythology about what happened that night. If you ask my old coaches or any of the guys who were rooting for me, they’ll tell you all about how I shut down the great Jay Williams. They’ll swear by it, saying things like Tim owned Jay . . . that game is proof that Tim could have played in the NBA.
