by Tim Howard
None of our differences mattered one whit.
We played in Group B, achieving the best first-round record in the group. We beat all the teams we played: Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, then El Salvador. We scored seven goals in total, and conceded none.
We made it to the finals, a sold-out match at Chicago’s Soldier Field against our archrivals, Mexico. I’ll be honest: the way I feel about Mexico’s national team borders on hatred, but a hatred born out of respect. I hate that their team is so damn good. I hate that they’ve beaten us so many times, for so many years. I hate that their fans turn out in such huge numbers—once again, the crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Mexico—allowing them to create a hostile environment even on our home turf.
I hate that the Mexican players dive—that when challenged, they’re likely to fall to the ground, roll around, appear to be on death’s door in hopes of getting the referee to call a foul against us and award them with a free kick or penalty kick. Diving isn’t part of our ethos, our culture. When a U.S. player gets tackled, he dusts himself off and keeps playing. Whenever Mexico dives, it fuels my already burning desire to beat them.
Walking out onto the field the day of the final, I’d say that every one of us felt that rivalry deep in our guts. We knew it would be a physical battle and sure enough before the game was ten minutes old, Carlos had earned a yellow card for a late challenge. Before the half, Mexico scored on a close-range shot. I dove for it and missed, landing on the ground, hard.
In the second half, Brian Ching was taken down in the box. Penalty. Landon stepped up to take the kick and coolly slotted it home.
1–1.
With 20 minutes left on the clock, Landon’s corner kick was cleared, but only to the edge of the box, where Benny Feilhaber was lurking, all alone.
From my vantage point, it was both too far out and there were too many Mexican players packing the penalty area for Benny to take the shot. A couple of our guys were even screaming at Benny: Don’t do it!
Benny paid them no mind. One touch and he sent the ball screaming toward the goal, past a cluster of Mexican defenders and their stunned keeper. It was one of the most amazing volleys I’ve ever seen. It almost tore the net off the goal. Later, the New York Times would call it “perhaps the greatest, the best, the most technically impressive goal scored in the long, long history of soccer in the United States.”
About a second and a half earlier we’d been shouting, “Don’t shoot,” and now we were running toward Benny, waving our arms like a bunch of crazed banshees, and lifting him off the ground.
After that, El Tri ramped up the pressure on us. In the 89th minute, Adolfo Bautista was three, maybe four yards away from me when the ball landed on his right foot. A large part of the goal was wide open.
I had a split second to guess as to where he would try to place his shot and when he pulled his foot back, I knew he was going to shoot across my body and to my right. I dove and stopped that thing cold to preserve our lead.
But Mexico kept on attacking. Even as the final whistle blew, Carlos was deflecting a ball away from our goal.
We’d won the Gold Cup. Best team in North America!
Then came a shower of confetti and the soaring notes of our national anthem. Dignitaries shaking our hands, placing medals around our necks. The cup itself, to be handed to the team captain, was enormous. As Carlos lifted it, we were all jumping up and down, every one of us, giddy like eight-year-olds on a trampoline.
I was so happy for Carlos. I’d known him since we were teenagers, since he was just a kid in baggy jeans and earrings. He’d always had outstanding character; now he was the captain of a team that had beaten Mexico. I was as proud of him as I’d have been for my own brother.
I didn’t get to celebrate in the locker room. It was my turn for random drug testing, so I was stuck in the doping room while the guys poured beer into the Gold Cup and drank from it. I missed the music, the dancing, the backslapping, and Bob Bradley beaming with pride.
By the time I finally got to the locker room, it was almost empty. I showered quickly and headed to the airport. From the cab, I called Laura. We’d spoken almost every night since I left a month ago. She was recovering nicely, in body and spirit. In fact, she’d bounced back so quickly that she’d even flown out to Boston for one of our knockout games, bringing the kids along for the ride. Ali was thriving, Jacob was as sweet as ever, and Laura was herself again.
“Oh my goodness,” Laura said when she answered the phone. “That was amazing!”
I could hear baby noises in the background, soft little grunts.
“That her?”
“Yeah,” whispered Laura. “She’s finally quieting down. I think she might even fall asleep right here on my shoulder.”
“And Jacob?”
“Napping. He can’t wait to see you.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
I passed the time waiting for my flight in an airport restaurant. I ordered myself a margarita—my own private celebration. Carlos texted to tell me they’d taken the cup on a bar crawl. Strangers kept coming up to them asking, What is that thing? Who are you guys?
I leaned back in my chair and looked around. Near me, a businessman barked into his phone. A middle-aged couple in matching white sneakers strolled past. A beleaguered-looking mom tried to get her daughter, who was dragging a rolling princess backpack behind her, to hurry.
Not one person recognized me. Nobody here had any idea that on this very day, the U.S. had established itself as the best soccer team on the continent.
I took a sip of my drink. Another text came through from Carlos: Bartender can’t believe we won this cup. Wish you could be here.
And it would have been nice to have been there with them . . . but not nice enough. It had been too long since I’d seen my wife and children. My baby girl was sleeping in my wife’s arms at this very minute. My boy was napping.
I was heading home.
SLAYING DRAGONS
By the 2008–2009 Premier League season, things were going well on all fronts. Ali had become a toddler, and boy did that kid keep us on our toes. She was animated and opinionated, constantly on the go. She fidgeted and fussed, struggled to sleep, could switch from laughter to howling in a split second. You never had to wonder whether Ali was happy or sad—whichever she was, she was all in.
But man, that girl could light up a room. Her eyes danced. By the time she was one year old, she was already throwing herself headfirst into everything. She carried the spark of life inside her, and it was pretty dazzling to see.
On Sundays, Laura and I took the kids to Tatton Park, a thousand-acre recreation area with acres of flowers and a painted carousel and jungle gyms. Every 20 minutes or so, a tiny red train drove past; we paid one pound to ride through the park on that thing, stopping at a working farm. The kids fed pigs and goats and cows, delighted by the animals taking the food from their hands. Then we paid another pound to ride the tiny train back to where we started.
Those were blissful days—more precious even than I could understand. The kids were so young. So happy. And we were all together in the same place.
We had a strong defense at Everton that year. Our communication was excellent. We found an easy rhythm. As a result, we developed a kind of confidence that in every game we stood a good chance of earning a clean sheet. At the end of each shutout, I looked up at Bill Kenwright, the team’s owner, applauding in the stands with all those good souls in blue around him, and it stoked my desire to do it again the next time.
And, with the help of my defenders, I often did. In fact, that season I had 17 shutouts—the highest number in Everton’s history.
That year, we started our run for the FA Cup with a game against Macclesfield, one of the lower league teams. We’d be playing on their turf, tiny Moss Rose stadium, which they’ve called home for over 100 years. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. While we’d grown accustomed to playing in Premier League stadiums that hold 60,000 or more, the total capacit
y of Moss Rose, including standing room, was one-tenth of that. There were only 2,600 seats—barely more than my high school gymnasium, and fewer than the basketball arena where I’d once battled Jay Williams my senior year of high school.
The Macclesfield locker rooms are so small that players had to make a choice. You could either sit on the bench or put your bag on it, but not both.
Moyes didn’t want us to be distracted by the snug conditions, so on the eve of the game, he took us out to the field. It had been snowing and sleeting for days, and, naturally, this matchbox of a stadium had no high-tech drainage or heating system (by contrast, Manchester United had recently installed a multimillion-dollar field, complete with 23 miles of heating pipes below ground). To protect the surface, they’d covered the entire place with tarps, weighted down by sandbags. Now they had to remove them. Whom did they enlist to do the work? The fans. The day we visited, the field was overflowing with Macclesfield supporters who’d come to shovel snow, carry tarps, do anything necessary to make sure the game could be played.
We stood there and marveled at all those guys who had taken time off work to slog around in the sleet, protected by only the thinnest of layers. Thanks to them, the game went on as scheduled the next day. Macclesfield fought hard. And although we beat them, 1–0, they earned our respect with their phenomenal team spirit.
After that, our FA Cup run saw us face only Premier League teams—and some pretty decent ones, too.
We tied Liverpool in the fourth round, then beat them 1–0 in a replay.
We defeated Aston Villa next, winning handily, 3–1.
In the quarters we knocked off Middlesbrough 2–1 to advance to the semifinals.
There, waiting for us, was none other than Manchester United.
It’s hard to describe how high the stakes felt before the United match. If we could get past them, it would be the first time Everton had made it to the FA Cup final since 1995, 14 years ago. Since Moyes had arrived, he’d steadily moved the team forward, player by player, practice by practice, with a fraction of the budget of the big clubs. Meanwhile, three of us—me, Phil Neville, and Saha—were former United players. We didn’t say it, but I know we were all thinking the same thing: how sweet would it be to beat the manager who had deemed us expendable?
Jimmy?” I said.
Jimmy grumbled. “What now?”
“I need another pair of white socks.” I wear white athletic socks under my soccer socks, but the ones that I put on today felt wrong. Completely wrong.
“All our socks are the same,” he said, sighing. But he knew me well enough by now. He handed me another pair of identical white socks. I tried them on, but they were still not right.
“Sorry, Jimmy.”
He set out another pair. Then another.
It was only the fifth pair that felt right.
Jimmy shook his head at me. “You just shut those guys out today.”
“You got it, Jimmy,” I said. “I’ll do it, or I’ll go down trying.”
Before I left for the game, which would be in London, I was packing my bag in the bedroom when Laura walked in there.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “We all are.”
She wrapped her arms around me, and I stood there—but the truth is, I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to mentally prepare for the game. At the moment, that meant packing my bag without distraction.
I’d gotten better at packing through the years—it was no longer an all-night process as it had been when I was a kid. But still: I wanted to do it right, so I could feel prepared.
I wanted to be in game mode. Not husband mode. They were two completely different things.
The game, held at Wembley Stadium, was the highest-attended FA Cup semifinal in history—more than 88,000 fans. As tradition dictates, half the stadium is given over to Manchester United fans, half to Everton fans. One side red. The other side blue.
I felt sure that Manchester United, and all their supporters, thought they knew exactly what was going to happen in that game. Somehow, they didn’t seem to expect much of a fight.
We gave them one anyway.
They had few chances in the first half and the ones they did have, I stopped. It was scoreless after 45 minutes. Then again at the end of regulation. Extra time came and went, and still nobody scored.
We were heading for a penalty kick shootout.
I flashed back to the 2005 FA Cup final when Ferguson had told me to warm up before the shootout and never put me in.
Well, I was in the game now. I was more confident than I’d been at Man U. I’d spent the last few years playing almost every match, and I had developed skills I never could have by sitting on the bench. I was determined to prove it.
The shootout would take place on Manchester United’s side, awash in red jerseys. We were to kick first.
Tim Cahill took the first penalty. Their keeper Ben Foster didn’t need to do a thing; the ball sailed right over the bar. Devastated, Cahill dropped to his knees. Around him, the United fans erupted. In that moment, I think they truly thought they had this.
My turn. I stopped a weak effort from Dimitar Berbatov. Still 0–0.
Our Leighton Baines smashed the ball slightly to Foster’s left. He absolutely drilled it home. 1–0.
Then I faced Rio Ferdinand, my old teammate. Somehow I sensed he was going right and dove that way. Rio hit his shot with power, but I was able to stop it.
Phil Neville didn’t flinch as he knocked one in against his former team. He sent the ball to the lower left corner as Ben dove toward the right-hand side. 2–0.
Nemanja Vidić added an unusual stutter step to his run up. It threw me. 2–1
Our James Vaughan sent a perfect shot to the upper right corner. Ben guessed correctly, but he had no chance on that one. 3–1.
Manchester United’s Anderson kicked one way. I dove the other: 3–2.
Then our center-back Phil Jagielka stepped up. I made a cross and waited.
Jags had a fast run up to the ball, and nailed it.
The blue side of Wembley went wild then. I sprinted toward my teammates. I made it about 15 yards from the goal area before I was wrestled to the ground by my teammates: Joleon Lescott and Steven Pienaar and Tony Hibbert, then everyone else. It was the best kind of mayhem—guys throwing themselves on top of me. Tugging and hugging, and piling on.
The Z-Cars song started playing, our anthem. Up in the stands, Bill Kenwright looked as if half of his 65 years had fallen away in that moment of triumph.
Someone tossed an Everton scarf onto the field. I don’t know who threw it, don’t know anything about that person’s life—where they worked, or what their family was like, or what challenges they faced as they walked through this world. I will never know what they sacrificed to be at Wembley that day.
But I knew this: they’d sent that scarf flying down to the field out of gratitude. I picked it up and raised it high over my head.
Later, in the locker room, I sat down next to Tony Hibbert. I tossed my towel over my head to wipe the sweat from my face. But instead of removing the towel, I left it there. I sat for a moment in the dark, amid all the cheers and whoops of my celebrating teammates.
And before I understood what was happening, I clutched the towel to my face and began sobbing.
I didn’t care that my teammates could see my shoulders shake. Didn’t worry if my cries could be heard over the sounds of their laughter.
Jags noticed. “Hey, Tim? You all right?”
Then Hibbert’s voice. “Yeah. He’s all right.” I felt his hand on my back. “He just needs a minute.”
Hibbo understood. He understood without my telling him. He realized exactly what this game meant for me.
We hadn’t won the final, mind you. In fact, we wouldn’t. We’d lose to Chelsea 2–1, despite taking a 1–0 lead 25 seconds into the game. And that loss would hurt.
But as I sat in the Wembley locker room with that towel pressed against my face, I wasn’
t thinking about the game ahead.
Right now all I heard in my head was a single line on endless repeat: I slayed the dragon.
Faith Rice called me in England around that time.
“Listen, Tim,” she said. “I’ve got a great idea. I need your help.”
Faith had been working away back in New Jersey. The nonprofit she’d started, now called the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome, NJCTS, was doing everything it could to provide support and education.
“But we need to do more,” she said. She explained that one of the great cruelties of TS is that the symptoms tend to peak in adolescence, precisely when kids are most vulnerable.
“I want to create a leadership academy for teens,” she said. The Academy, as she envisioned it, would teach them the skills they’d need to navigate adult life. It would help them cope with the added social stress of being a kid with TS.
“Most of all,” she added, “we’ll give them the tools to find their own strengths.”
Maybe if I’d had that kind of support, I could have slayed another kind of dragon even sooner: maybe I could have conquered the shame I’d felt about my TS.
In 2009, as a result of our Gold Cup victory, we automatically qualified for the Confederations Cup, a tournament contested by the six FIFA Confederations Champions, as well as the most recent World Cup winners and the upcoming World Cup host country.
It was going to be an uphill fight, but also an opportunity to prove ourselves against some formidable opponents—Brazil, Spain, and Italy. As a national team, although we’d been steadily gaining credibility, we weren’t yet peers with the elite squads.
Our first couple of games were . . . well . . . they were pretty much disasters.
First we lost to Italy, 3–1. Then we got pounded 3–0 by Brazil. We were overmatched and outclassed in every way. I made a couple of tough saves in each of those games, but I’d let in six.
It shook me. With two losses behind us, we entered our game against Egypt, with zero points—dead last in the tournament. Even if we could beat them, we’d only get three points, maximum, and it’s very rare that a team can advance to the next round out of a four-team group with only three points.
