The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them (14 page)

I loved her loyalty. But the truth is, it wasn’t one mistake anymore. I was making many.

I
n October, we played Arsenal at Old Trafford. I didn’t play, but I joined the fight, in a way.

Arsenal had swaggered in on the back of a 49-game unbeaten run. They skulked out with a one-match losing streak after we beat them 2–0. Ruud converted a penalty kick, and a 19-year-old prodigy named Wayne Rooney, who had come over from Everton, scored a stunning strike in stoppage time.

It was a physical game from the start and the bad blood flowed past the final whistle. We were in the locker room celebrating our victory when Ferguson walked in. He had this massive stain on his crisp white shirt—some kind of red splotch. He looked totally bewildered.

“Gaffer?” someone asked. “What happened?”

Ferguson said that as he walked past the Arsenal locker room, someone had hurled a slice of pizza at him. Outside the locker room, we could hear a commotion—loud, aggressive voices.

Some of our own teammates were out there, with several of the Arsenal players, and they were about to have a throw-down.

That was it. We leapt up and ran out into the hallway that separated the two locker rooms. It was a narrow space, and everyone was pushing and shoving, grabbing shirts, trying to swing at each other. It was like fighting inside a phone booth; nobody had the room to throw a punch; all we could do was push a palm in someone’s face. A couple of police officers were trying to break up the fight, but they were no match for the out-of-control players. I watched as one of the police officer’s hats got knocked off in the scuffle.

For whatever reason, Rio Ferdinand was late getting to the locker room—Rio’s tall, and from where I stood, I could see him barging his way through the Arsenal players. When he reached our side, he turned around and starting whaling on anyone in a yellow jersey. He couldn’t have even known what we were fighting about, but it didn’t stop him.

When I got home that afternoon, I looked at Laura and shook my head.

“This is a weird job.”

I
’d started playing cautiously, tight. I knew I was on a short rope—a very short rope—and that everything I did was going to be scrutinized in a way it never had been before.

My game had changed.

I was focusing more on avoiding mistakes than on winning games. I was thinking,
Get through this game. Make sure that if a goal does go in, it’s not your fault.

As long as it wasn’t my fault, I could stay on the team.

It was the worst possible mindset a keeper can have. A keeper needs to do everything in his power to stop the ball. Period.

In one game, I punched a ball out of the box. It was a weaker
punch than I’d intended, and Rio admonished me, “Tim, you’ve got to catch the fucking thing.”

So the next time the ball came toward me, in the same game, I caught it. But the catch was loose, just barely in my arms. Roy Keane looked at me ferociously. “Punch that fucking thing,” Roy said. His voice was laced with venom. “Punch it next time.”

Somehow, I needed to get back to a place where I had conviction, where I could take a risk. I needed to be Tony Meola, charging fearlessly out of his goal. Or Kasey Keller, unflappable in the face of uncertainty. And I’ll give the guy credit where it’s due: I could even have used a dose of Brad Friedel’s bluster, his bullheadedness.

T
he fans noticed my timidity, every bit as much as my teammates and coaches had. One afternoon, a little old lady followed me around the grocery store. She was older than my mother, this woman. And I’m telling you: she glared at me. There she was in the dairy section as I put milk in the cart. Then again by the breads aisle.

Each time, I’d walked away, only to have her follow me to my next stop.

Finally, in the produce section, I looked right at her and spoke.

“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”

She glowered at me. “Well, I’d be doing a lot better,” she said, “if you would stop dropping the bloody ball.”

W
hen we decided to have a baby, Laura paid the same meticulous attention to the details of her fertility that she had to every other aspect of our lives. She purchased an ovulation predictor kit. She mastered the art of peeing on sticks. She monitored her body temperature, the slightest change in her cycle.

“I mean, we might as well try to maximize our chances,” she said. “I know so many people who tried to have a baby for so long.”

In December, Laura and I flew to Marbella, Spain. I was so desperate for a break, even a short one. I needed to catch my breath before going back to the field.

“I’m going to sit on that beach,” I said, “and do nothing at all.”

Laura was changing in the bathroom. I walked around the room picking up everything we’d need by the water: sunscreen, Laura’s sun hat, books, an extra T-shirt for me, a football for tossing in the sand. Extra towels. Beach chairs.

“Come on, girl,” I called to her. “I want to get started with my doing nothing.”

My arms were loaded by then with items in both hands and chairs wedged precariously under each arm.

Laura opened the bathroom door. “Tim?” Laura said. There was a glint in her eye. “I’m ovulating.”

I dropped everything. I didn’t even try to set it all down. Hats, chairs, sunscreen, football, went crashing to the floor.

I was by her side in two seconds flat.

The beach could wait.

B
ack home, 11 days later, Laura emerged from the bathroom waving a white stick in the air.

“Tim!” she exclaimed. She was laughing and glowing, the same way she had at the W hotel in Times Square. “Tim, guess what?! There are two lines.”

A pregnancy test. Two lines.

Clayton ran over to her and danced around in circles. You could see him wondering what the fuss was about. A walk? A treat?

Laura didn’t even look at him.

She wiggled the stick. “Look. The lines are really, really faint,” she said, “but they’re there.”

I squinted. Sure enough, if I looked hard, I could see them. There were two blue lines.

I allowed that to sink in. Two lines meant baby. We were having a baby.

I hadn’t felt this excited since our wedding day.

At that moment, nothing else mattered. Not Tony Coton, not Alex Ferguson, not Roy Keane’s cursing at me, not whether I would play in the next game.

Laura and I were going to be parents. We had started our family.

I forgot all about my professional slump. With this news, everything on God’s green earth suddenly seemed as good as it gets.

B
y now I was calling Mulch to ask him what he saw me doing wrong in my games. Since I wasn’t getting any feedback from Coton, Mulch had become my go-to guy. He watched every match, and he was honest.

“You’re not playing like yourself,” he said. “You’re stiff. Your face is tight. You look like you’re not enjoying yourself.”

He was right; I hated playing small like that. I hated feeling afraid.

“Just be Tim Howard,” he said. “If you can get back to doing what you do, you’ll be fine.”

M
y mom visited.

I could feel her watching. I left for practice in the morning. Came home. Napped. When I got up, I didn’t say much.

When the two of us were alone, Mom said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you still love soccer?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

A
t the end of the 2004–2005 season, we met Arsenal again in the FA Cup final. Roy Carroll played. I watched from the sidelines.

By the end of 90 minutes, the game was tied, 0–0. We went into overtime, and still no goals.

About 15 minutes before the end of the game, it seemed clear: we were headed for a penalty kick shootout. Ferguson turned around.

“Tim,” he said. “Go warm up.”

Good
, I thought.
He’s going to put me in for the shootout, and I’m going to win this game for the team.

I warmed up, then went back to the bench. Waited. The clock ticked by. Players ran up and down the field.

I stood again, jogged up and down the touchline. I stretched. I wanted to stay fresh.

When I sat down, I watched the back of Ferguson’s head. Any minute, he was going to turn around and send me in.

The whistle blew. The teams started moving toward the goal for the shootout.

I waited, but Ferguson didn’t turn around. He didn’t say a word. He sat there watching as Roy Carroll took his place in the box.

I wanted to scream.
I can do this. I can handle penalty kick shootouts like no one else I know.

Today I’d have spoken up. Today I’d have reminded him: I’m right here. I’m ready. But on that day, I didn’t, and I never went in. We lost that shootout and the game.

Later, in the locker room, Ferguson ripped into the players one by one. Someone must have told Roy that I’d been warming up, because by the time Ferguson got to him, he snapped.

“Well,” shouted Roy, staring right at Ferguson. “If you wanted to fucking put Tim in, you should have fucking put Tim in!” His face was red and his eyes burned like fire.

The stress of this season. I’m telling you. It was going to take us both down.

W
e finished the season third in the table. It was only the fourth time in 16 years that we hadn’t earned a league trophy.

In June, Laura and I returned to Memphis—back to our house, back to our life there. We sat by the pool and watched her belly grow and waited for that baby to come.

Not long after we returned, my phone rang. Alex Ferguson was on the other end of the line. You know something’s up when the club manager calls you at home, from another continent.

“Did Tony tell you?” he asked.

“Tell me what?” Tony hadn’t talked to me since the season ended.

“We’re releasing Roy Carroll. We’ve signed Edwin van der Sar.”

Van der Sar was a highly regarded keeper from Fulham. He was long and lanky, cool under pressure. His nickname was “the Ice Rabbit.”

“We need competition for this position,” Ferguson said. “Nothing’s set in stone. The first keeper job’s up for grabs.”

He was reassuring me, but I didn’t buy it.

“Okay,” I said. I hung up, then walked into the kitchen. Laura was there, her belly as round as a basketball now.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Alex Ferguson.”

She looked surprised.

“He just signed Edwin van der Sar,” I said. I explained who Edwin was. I told her that Ferguson had said I might still be the starting keeper.

“But it’s all a load of bullshit,” I said. I knew the truth.

Sometimes a club’s actions say it all. My platooning with Carroll made it obvious that they didn’t believe in me as their regular keeper. Now they followed that up by acquiring someone who was a big star. Their intentions were clear.

In a few months, I’d have a child—a son, I was so sure of that. I didn’t want my child to see his dad sitting on the bench. I didn’t care how many millions of dollars I could earn watching from the sidelines. I was determined to play.

L
ife as Edwin’s backup was more or less what I expected. Tony fawned over him the way he once did over me. During trainings Edwin informed him what drills he wanted to do, and Tony did exactly as he was told.

“How’s training going?” Mulch asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t get any feedback.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tony talks to Edwin,” I said. “That’s it.”

Mulch didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was thinking,
That Tony Coton is a worm, and you need to get out from underneath him.

Edwin, on the other hand, wasn’t a bad guy; he was unfailingly polite, always a gentleman around me. But we were from different worlds, different cultures.

It was clear, too, that Edwin wasn’t going to mentor me, or anybody else. He was focused on his own game, nothing more.

Edwin really was a terrific keeper, though. He had reach and agility, with an uncanny instinct for anticipating where the ball would land. At six feet six, he could stretch so far in goal that he made near-impossible saves look easy. Most of all, he was clear
and direct with the defenders, positioning them with such authority and decisiveness that he often didn’t even need to make those saves.

I can learn from this guy
, I thought.
If I don’t let my ego get in the way.

Edwin can make me better.

W
e learned that the baby was breech. Laura and the doctor scheduled a C-section for September 5.

Laura’s mom stayed with us in England, and my mom arrived two days before the procedure. Together, they fussed about the house. They folded and refolded baby onesies. They organized diapers, prepared heaps of food.

Our moms were so different—as different as night and day. Mine was a flower-power immigrant mom, quiet in demeanor, but a fierce political liberal. And Laura’s mom was a friendly Southerner, a devout Baptist with conservative political views. Before, long, these two women would be grandmothers to the same child, providing both yin and yang in the baby’s life.

When September 5 rolled around, I was a nervous wreck. I was jittery as we walked into the hospital, jittery as I put on scrubs and they prepped Laura for the procedure. And although I did my best to stay cool, I was completely off-the-charts terrified when they sliced into her.

But then the doctor said those three incredible words—
it’s a boy.
We heard our baby boy cry, and a few minutes later a nurse handed him to me, all bundled up in a flannel blanket. And then I was holding him.

My son.

“Look at him,” I said. “Just look.” He’d been in the world mere minutes, but I was already completely head over heels in love.

“Yeah,” said Laura. “I know exactly what you mean.”

We sat there quietly for a while, then I turned to Laura. “You know, I think this is the first time I’ve ever held a baby.”

She laughed. “Well, you look like a natural, Tim.”

A while later, I threw open the double doors to the waiting room. There were the grandmothers. (The grandmothers! My mother was a grandmother now!)