Riverhounds
Thompson’s goalkeeper career reaches new high
Jamaican goalie Ryan Thompson rewarded for patience.
Ryan Thompson is a bit like a human Weeble.
Punched, kicked or knocked down, he always finds a way to pop back up — with a smile continually plastered on his face.
He became the first Jamaican to play in the prestigious UEFA Champions League. By the end of that season, he was unemployed for six months. Now he is with the Riverhounds, who play the Wilmington Hammerheads FC at 7 p.m. today in United Soccer League (USL) action at Highmark Stadium.
And this 30-year-old is back on the upswing.
“It’s just crazy how life brings you places and takes you back,” Thompson said. “It tests your faith.”
Thompson started the final three games for Jamaica in the recent CONCACAF Gold Cup, helping his country to its first appearance in the final and a silver medal. But that starting position was a long time coming. It wasn’t until he was 14 that Thompson, on a whim, first tried goalkeeping. Within six years, he had developed into one of the best keepers in his country and emerged as a staple on the Under-20 and U-23 national teams.
But beneath the success was a sense of frustration.
“Things just got bitter with me,” he said. “I realized there was like a glass ceiling back home.”
Thompson said he played with a lot of talented goalkeepers whose careers ended at 19 and 20. Many became disillusioned with the sport and quit to join the military. Thompson wanted soccer to take him places, and he used the sport to become the first person in his mother’s family to graduate college, earning a marketing degree from University of Tampa.
Tampa coach Adrian Bush said he knew as soon as Thompson stepped off the plane from Jamaica what a “first-class” person he was. He said Thompson is probably the only player in the program’s history to be a four-year captain.
“Within a week’s time, he knew the entire university,” Bush said. “He knew professors. He knew our administration. … I’m talking janitors, people who work at the school, were like, ‘That young man was the most respectful guy we have ever met.’”
Even when the NCAA banned him for one year because he had played with a professional team in Jamaica, though he was never paid, Bush said Thompson just worked harder when he couldn’t play. But despite All-America honors, Thompson went undrafted in Major League Soccer.
He eventually signed with a Premier Development League team, his second after playing with one in college, in Maine in 2010, and his coach there helped Thompson earn a tryout with the top Irish team, Shamrock Rovers FC.
“At the time, I was so desperate I would have gone anywhere,” Thompson said. “If he had said, ‘You need to go to Iraq.’ I would have went, ‘Yes, I’ll go there and play.’”
In 2011 with the Rovers, Thompson eventually earned the starting spot, playing in the Champions League third qualifying round and helping the Rovers become the first Irish team in the Europa League group stage.
At the end of the season, though, the Rovers changed coaches, and Thompson was left without a contract. He was unemployed for six months and bounced around from the PDL to a third-division Swedish team before taking a year away from organized soccer to train. This part was his “sad story.” But within two years, his nosediving career skyrocketed.
He played the 2014 season with North American Soccer League’s Tampa Bay Rowdies and received a call from new Jamaica coach Winfried Schäfer to rejoin the team that Thompson thought had forgotten about him; his previous appearance was 10 years prior when he was 19.
Pascal Millien, Thompson’s best friend from playing together in college, said Thompson inspires him, and it almost makes him cry to think how his friend never quit on his dreams.
“He’s the type of player that the kids can look at and say, ‘Hey, because of this guy, I’m not going to give up,’” said Millien, who plays for the Haiti national team. “Thirty years old, playing on a big stage, that’s a huge thing. I don’t know how many people [could] have done what Ryan just did.”
Now back with the Riverhounds in the USL after starting in Jamaica’s historic Gold Cup run, Thompson is already setting his sights on the 2018 World Cup in Russia and playing at the highest level. Nicknamed Godzilla — Godda for short — for his fearless style of play, Thompson isn’t too worried about what more obstacles the future may hold.
“Life in general is so hard,” he said. “Soccer is just a game. … Every time I make a mistake, I remember those moments … what I went through to be there. No one can tell me that I shouldn’t enjoy myself out there. I’m going to live in that moment. I’m going to die in that moment. I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to smile in that moment. As painful as it is sometimes to see goals fly past you, at least you’re there. There’s a million and one people who would love to be in that situation.
“I’m happy that things are finally looking up for once.”