USA TODAY International Edition
Dempsey earns nod as most important player
Whenever the woes of American soccer are discussed, someone inevitably raises the question of “when is the United States going to produce its own Lionel Messi?”
It could start by trying to produce more Clint Dempseys.
Dempsey, 35, called time on his professional career on Wednesday, announcing the decision via a statement released by his Major League Soccer club, the Seattle Sounders.
“After a lot of thought, my family and I have decided that this is the right time for me to step away from the game,” Dempsey said. “I’m grateful to have been on this ride.”
He leaves the game as the joint top scorer in U.S. men’s national team history, tied with Landon Donovan on 57, and locked in a stalemate with Donovan in the public’s perception of who is the best player the U.S. has produced.
There is little to choose between the two, for varying reasons. Donovan was the face of the national team program for the best part of a decade. Dempsey scored in three World Cups, had a key role in the second-place 2009 Confederations Cup campaign and, despite Donovan’s haul of MLS Cup trophies, played much of his club soccer at a higher level.
A lot of the debate boiled down to how you like your soccer players. Donovan had the air of someone always destined for stardom and he wore it well, enjoying his status in the domestic league and the American game and accepting the responsibility of growing the sport stateside.
Dempsey had a little more edge, a cool customer with a love of rap music and open-water fishing but with a fierce competitive streak.
It was that level of desire and determination that drove a kid from Nacogdoches, Texas, all the way to the English Premier League, where he shined brightly for Fulham and briefly Tottenham and showed he belonged among the very elite of the game.
There are a couple of questions that linger, and they are all of the “what if ” variety. What if ... he had stayed in England a bit longer?
When Dempsey left Tottenham after one season in 2013 he was only a year removed from having been voted the EPL’s fourth-best player by the Football Writers Association, on the back of his prolific 2011-12 season with Fulham.
And, much later, what if ... his late effort against Trinidad and Tobago in 2017 had gone in instead of crashing against the woodwork?
A tie in the tiny Trinidadian town of Couva would have been enough to send the Americans to the World Cup, would have given Dempsey outright ownership of the national team’s goalscoring record and would have prevented the subsequent (and probably) necessary inquest into the state of soccer in this country.
The spotlight did not always seem to sit easily with Dempsey. During the 2014 World Cup he spurned many of his captain’s press duties, sometimes handing them off to teammate Jermaine Jones.
He did, however, provide one of the team’s most memorable moments, with a stunning run and strike for a first-minute goal that helped set up victory over Ghana in the Americans’ only win of the tournament.
For those who got to know him, Dempsey could be thoughtful, insightful company. He suffered loss as a youngster — his trademark goal celebration included a look to the skies in tribute to his sister Jennifer, a promising junior tennis player who died of a brain aneurysm in 1995.
On a national team visit to Jamaica in 2013 he surprised a reporter with the extent of his knowledge of Bob Marley’s political impact on the island.
He made his own mark on MLS. When he came home in 2013 to play for Seattle on a huge $8 million a year contract, it sparked a new era for the league. Here was an American player returning to the States, in the prime of his career, for more money than what he was getting in Europe. Within a couple of years, a swath of his national team colleagues had followed.
In 2016, Dempsey was diagnosed with a heart condition that put his career, and potentially his life, in danger. However, he bounced back strongly, winning the MLS Comeback Player of the Year award in 2017 and regaining his position on the national team squad.
His limited opportunities with Seattle this season seem to have prompted him to walk away, instead of being content to collect a paycheck for doing little. He leaves much as he played, on his own terms.