by Tim Howard
“If you cannae handle the fucking stage”—his Scottish accent was coming through loud and clear—“I’ll send you right back to the MLS.”
The disdain in his voice when he said “MLS” was palpable.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes as a keeper, that’s for sure. I’ll make plenty more before I’m through. Granted, the three-man wall turned out to be the wrong strategy, given the free kick that Henry ultimately took. But the thing is, he might have opted for an entirely different shot. What if he had kicked it high and to my left? Then a four-man wall could have made it harder for me to see the ball.
There had been no way to know what a world-class player like Henry would do; in the moment, all you can do is make a judgment call.
But I wasn’t going to say that to this legend of English soccer—and certainly not while his eyes were bugging wildly out of his head. I looked down at the ground and let him berate me—longer, I might add, than seemed necessary, all things considered.
His final words to me were soaked in derision. “You’re not in America anymore, son.”
Neither team scored in the second half. The match was still deadlocked at 1–1 at the final whistle. Since there’s no overtime in the Community Shield, the game would be settled by a penalty kick shootout.
Sometimes people ask me how I feel about penalty kicks, the ultimate high-stakes moment of a game. My answer is simple: I love them. I have loved penalty kicks since I was 12 years old. I have no proof, but I believe that my heightened senses—the flip side of my TS—makes me better able to read the shooter, to anticipate balls better than most keepers.
And while it’s true that the likelihood of actually making a save is fairly low, a keeper doesn’t need to stop them all. If you can save one or two, you generally end up a hero.
Plus there’s something about that moment standing in goal, just you and the shooter. There’s not a time when you’re more alert, more alive, more attuned to absolutely everything around you.
Most of the time, a penalty kick is a guessing game. Which way will the shooter send the ball? Which way should you dive? You can try to make it an educated guess—keepers spend a tremendous amount of time studying videos of different shooters’ PK histories. You can also try to read the player’s body language, a tiny motion he might make in his run-up to the ball that hints at the direction of the shot. In that case, you might have a fraction of a second to decide.
More often than not, though, it’s a crapshoot.
Paul Scholes was up first. The stadium was silent. As Scholes prepared to take the kick, Arsenal’s keeper Jens Lehmann danced all over the box, jumping back and forth trying to distract him. Didn’t work. Scholes put it away.
Then I faced down the Brazilian Edu. I couldn’t read him, and I didn’t know enough about his tendencies, so I guessed. I dove left.
Although it was the correct choice, his shot was just beyond my reach.
1–1.
Rio Ferdinand scored; I stopped van Bronckhorst.
2–1.
Then van Nistelrooy missed and Arsenal’s Sylvain Wiltord stepped up. I guessed wrong again. I flew one way, the ball sailed past me the other way. I was so mad at myself I kicked the ball into the upper corner of the net. 2–2.
United’s Solskjær: score.
Arsenal’s Lauren: score.
United’s Forlán: score. Now we were up 4–3.
Arsenal had only one bullet left in the chamber.
The kicker was Robert Pirès, a French international who the previous year had scored the winning goal in the FA Cup final. Pirès was generally regarded as one of the best players in the league.
If I could stop him, we’d win.
That summer I had watched the French national team on television and happened to see Pirès take a penalty kick. For some reason, that image stuck in my head. Standing now in the goal, with Pirès directly in front of me, I saw the entire shot play out in my mind almost like I was watching a video replay—could picture the ball’s precise trajectory, how it veered sharply toward the low right corner of the goal.
So that’s where I dove. I had to extend my body fully, reach toward it with everything I had. Even before I made contact with the ball, I knew: I had this one. I forced it wide.
Half of the stadium—the roughly 30,000 fans in red shirts—sprang to their feet and went berserk.
I got up, barely registering the red jerseys that were already tearing toward me. Instead, I turned toward the fans and raised my arms in victory.
By the time I wheeled around, Mikaël Silvestre was wrapping his arms around me. We were still embracing when John O’Shea flew toward us in a leaping hug. Then Ruud was there, encircling his arms around the three of us. The rest of the team piled on top: Giggs and Keane and Ferdinand, all those legends playfully punching my stomach and rubbing my bald head.
We’d won. Even better, we’d won on penalty kicks.
The Man U fans jumped up and down all over that stadium. They waved flags and twirled scarves in the air like lassos. In front of them stood Sir Alex Ferguson. He looked as if he had forgotten, by now, all about that three-man wall.
In the wake of the Arsenal victory, I was named the starting goalkeeper. Manchester United soon began negotiating Barthez’s transfer to the French club Marseille. It happened in an instant. That, I knew, was one of the risks of playing soccer at this level. If I didn’t perform, there would be somebody right behind me who’d be thrilled to jump into my place. The gap that separated me from my competition would never be more than a game. Or a coaching change. Or an injury.
Privately, Fabien was always friendly. Publicly, he made statements like I blame only myself if I lose my spot. This from a guy who had won the Premier League the previous season and won the World Cup and European Championship with France and was now watching as his job was handed to a 24-year-old straight from Major League Soccer.
Here, in the most competitive position on the world’s most competitive team, he was nothing but classy.
If that should happen to me someday, I thought, I hope I’ll handle it the same way.
Laura arrived a few weeks later, on a drizzly morning. Manchester is a gloomy town—almost always gray and rainy. But Laura is all bright colors, all sparkle. When she emerged from customs, it was like she’d brought all the sunshine of Memphis, all the warmth of home with her.
“I’m here!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I’m finally here!”
We collected her bags, dragged them out to the new Mercedes—“Verrrry nice,” she said approvingly.
Before I turned on the engine, I looked at Laura.
My wife.
It was a strange moment for me. I’d been so caught up in the excitement of the last couple of months—it had all been heady and frenetic. Falling in love, and traveling between Memphis and New Jersey, meeting each other’s families, getting engaged, planning the huge wedding that never happened. Our whirlwind trip here to sign with Manchester United. Back to the States for the tiny impromptu wedding that happened instead. The series of exhibitions I had played for my new team as Laura took apart her old life in Memphis, to be reassembled now with me.
She’d said so many times, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to get there.
I can’t wait to start living with you.
Now she was here. Our life together—whatever it looked like—was about to begin. We were about to drive to our new house, the near-mansion that she and I had selected just a few weeks ago. (Was it just a few weeks ago? Already it felt like forever)
Sitting there with her in that car, my hand on the ignition, I realized I had no idea how to do this thing I was about to do—perform my job to the best of my abilities and live with a wife in this dark, damp country.
I took a deep breath, and started the engine. The wipers made steady sloshing noises as we drove through the rain. I felt my face twitch a little as I stared straight ahead.
I’m going to have to figure this out, I thought.
We lived about a block from Wilmslow’s Grove Street, a pedestrian shopping plaza. It was a neighborhood of “footballers.” As we strolled over to Grove Street, we passed Bentleys and Aston Martins, a sure sign that soccer players were about. At the end of the shopping plaza sat a Starbucks. There, I might spot some of my teammates or guys from the other big clubs in the area.
Walking home, Laura would offer her views on whomever we’d seen. Her opinions rarely had anything to do with their game: it was all about how much they’d been caught up in the weird egocentric world around us.
She liked Cristiano Ronaldo, for example—liked how boyish and friendly he was. Cristiano had come to England with his mother, a sturdy, thickly accented Portuguese woman who looked like she’d just left the island of Madeira. Within a year, his mom would be decked out in Prada sunglasses and $2,000 handbags. But Cristiano would never stop doting on his mom, something that always impressed Laura.
She adored Paul Scholes, because he’d quit the national team to spend more time with his kids. Laura appreciated family guys who hadn’t let the money go to their heads.
But others, like Roy Keane, she couldn’t bear. “Ugh,” she said. “I can’t stand that guy. He walks around like he thinks he’s bigger than God.”
I laughed. Laura was American, through and through—and she had no patience for the huge egos that dominated English soccer.
I happened to like Roy. Sure, he was quick to rage, loose with profanity, and often itching for a fight, sometimes even with his own teammates.
And granted, he could be arrogant. But he had every right to be. He was the captain of Manchester United and he had led them to countless trophies; he actually was every bit as good as he believed he was. Besides, he had that quality I’d always appreciated in people: you knew where you stood with the man. He gave it to you straight, even if “straight” meant his words were shouted, and came strung together with F-bombs.
I naively thought that I could maintain some sense of a private life in England. Once I arrived in Manchester, I’d given an interview to the New York Times. When the reporter asked me about Laura, I’d said, “That’s private.”
Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.
It’s hard to express the degree of fanaticism within the Premier League. There’s nothing quite like it in the United States. In the U.S., we’ve got our share of superfans, men and women who live and die by their team’s fortunes.
But in the States, loyalties are divided across sports. We’ve got the NBA. The NFL. National Hockey League. Major League Baseball. We’ve got NASCAR and, yes, Major League Soccer, too. We’ve got college sports—March Madness and the BCS.
Now imagine if the most rabid fans from each of these different sports coalesced around a single team within a single sport. Imagine that their dedication runs deep, through multiple generations over a century. Imagine that reports about their sport are broadcast around the clock—in every pub, every restaurant, every hotel lobby in the country.
Now imagine being a player in their midst.
Most of the time, it’s incredible. I love the passion, the commitment. It’s a joy to see perfectly ordinary people leap out of their seat in a state of pure ecstasy. I don’t even mind hearing the expletives pour out of their mouths toward the players on the field.
But once in a while, I come across someone who takes it too far. One night, for example, Laura and I were at a pub with a friend when a man stumbled up to our table. “Tim Howard,” the guy bellowed, “you don’t know shit about goalkeeping.”
Suddenly, the din of the voices around us grew quiet. The man’s face was flushed and his words slurred, probably from a few too many pints. Other than that, he looked like a normal guy in his forties—probably somebody’s husband, somebody’s dad, a midlevel employee of some company.
I felt my heart beating faster, felt that rush of adrenaline through my body. The same thing happened to me before each game; it was what allowed me to stay alert, to sense danger on that field, to stop the ball reflexively, without thinking. But there was no ball to be stopped here, only some red-nosed jerk with a paunch telling me how to do my job.
Laura looked right at me, as if silently saying, Keep your cool, keep your cool.
“You know I pay your wages, right?” He continued: “I’ve got a season ticket, so I’m the one who’s paying you.”
As his friends dragged him from our table, I could still hear his voice: “You’re a wanker, Tim Howard. And don’t you forget who pays your salary.”
Our guest’s jaw hung open. He gave a little shake of his head, as if to trying to dislodge the unpleasant encounter he had witnessed.
“So,” he said. “This happen a lot?”
I shrugged. I could feel my heart pounding. “Sometimes,” I said. What I wanted to do was get up, find this guy, grab him by his shirt collar. I wanted to remind him that his season ticket entitled him to one thing only: to attend the game, to scream and cheer virtually anything that wasn’t racist or homophobic. And then to go home.
It sure as hell didn’t give him the right to interrupt dinner with my wife and friend.
Laura and I did our best to try to acclimate to life in Manchester. Our first order of business was to get a dog.
Clayton was a goofy puppy who flopped all over the house, always getting in trouble. He needed to be in constant motion or he’d start chewing the furniture or scratching at the doors. He reminded me of myself and my brother, running roughshod all over Mom’s apartment back in New Jersey.
“He’s going to destroy this house!” I’d exclaim. Then I’d try to scold him, and Laura would swoop him up. She’d pet behind his ears and say, “Aw, but he’s just learning. And he’s such a good boy.
“Aren’t you a good boy, Clayton?” Then that dog would go bounding around the house all over again.
Clayton took forever to housebreak; we’d come in from the grocery store, only to find piles and puddles staining the hardwood floors of our beautiful Manchester United home.
We’d stand in the doorway, temporarily paralyzed by the constant havoc of this furry little creature.
Then Laura would go into action mode. “You get the paper towels,” she would say. “I’ll get the plastic bag.”
I was playing well. In my first nine games, I posted six clean sheets, and had allowed only three goals. By January, I’d started in 29 matches, posting a 22–5–2 record, with 14 shutouts.
The tabloids turned around their screaming headlines pretty quickly.
The bestselling Sun noted, THIS YANK’S NO PLANK.
The Express agreed: YANKEE DOING DANDY.
And the more sober-minded broadsheets chimed in as well. “If the American goalkeeper has a weakness,” the Telegraph observed, “there has not been a team who have located it.”
Before long, the home crowd had even made up a chant for me. Sometimes when I stopped a shot, I’d hear the Man U supporters singing to the tune of “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins:
Tim Timminy,
Tim Timminy,
Tim Tim-eroo
We’ve got Tim Howard and he says “Fuck you!”
It was a play on my TS, of course. And while it wasn’t remotely accurate, I could live with it. It beat being called “retarded” and “disabled,” anyway.
Again and again, I was compared to Peter Schmeichel, the “Great Dane,” former United keeper widely considered to be among the top ten in history. In a Reuters poll more than 200,000 fans had ranked him the best goalie of all time.
During one interview, Tony Coton said he believed that I could even surpass Schmeichel. Halfway through my first season, Schmeichel himself said that I could be “a United legend.”
It was flattering, but every time I heard someone spout this kind of hyperbole, I wanted to say, Wait. Please wait.
I’d spent my entire life comparing myself to others. I knew exactly how I stacked up against Schmeichel. I had talent, I had drive, and I had a heck of a lot of potential.
But I wasn’t in Schmeichel’s class. Not by a long shot.
I knew something else, too. As hard as I was working, and as lucky as I’d gotten, it was just a matter of time before I made a mistake. A big one.
THE LONGEST SEASON
Six weeks after the Community Shield, we met Arsenal again in a match that would go down in soccer folklore . . . and not for its outstanding play. Still scoreless in the 80th minute, the game turned ugly when Ruud van Nistelrooy and Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira both went after a high ball, and Ruud jumped on top of Vieira, knocking them both to the ground. Vieira kicked out at Ruud—a deliberate, nasty cheap shot. Already on a yellow card, Vieira was given a second one for the foul on van Nistelrooy, which resulted in automatic ejection.
When the game ended, the Arsenal players surrounded Ruud. Martin Keown, who had a history of bad blood with the striker, got right up in Ruud’s face, bringing his arm down hard on the back of his neck—he clocked the guy. Ray Parlour, Ashley Cole, and a few other Arsenal players joined in, jostling and taunting Ruud for missing a penalty kick in stoppage time. Roy Keane tried to pull Ruud out of there. As he did, three more United players, Cristiano Ronaldo, Quinton Fortune, and Mikaël Silvestre, entered the fracas, ready to defend their besieged teammate.
From the end of the field, I watched it escalate, swelling to a bench-clearing 25-man melee. Here were some of the world’s top pros pushing and shoving as if they were in the schoolyard.
What is happening?
It was adrenaline, of course—the same chemical that kick-started my rage when the middle-aged drunk approached me in the restaurant—and I’d soon come to learn how much it could dominate players’ lives, both on and off the field.
Arsenal’s win that day was just the beginning of an incredible run that would see them go through the season unbeaten and earn them the moniker “the Invincibles.” But by the time we played them again, I would no longer be on the field.
The winters come quickly in Manchester and last for a long, long time. By early September, the average daytime temperature is in the 50s, often dipping to near-freezing at night. Manchester sits on the 53rd North parallel—as far north as many parts of Alaska. It’s dark by 3 P.M., and shops are shuttered by 5 P.M. The color of the sky ranges from slate gray to ink black.
