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PART 4

It’s dark out, time has gotten away. I didn’t envision talking to Dempsey to be this easy, for him to be so engaged. I should probably let the guy get some rest. But he keeps asking questions, almost as many as me. He wants to compare our lives, proving his point that he’s just another guy working his way up.

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All those details Tom Wolfe wants to believe define us support Clint’s claim. Nothing is extravagant. He and Bethany go to movies. They dress like a couple of average twenty-somethings. They go to dinner in the neighborhood. They hang out with teammate Eddie Johnson and his family. They enjoy going to Brian McBride’s home where they found all the places that carry American style cheese and pickles. “It’s pretty boring, but we love it,” Clint says of his daily life. “Bethany got an internship, so she was working most days. At nights we just chill. I’ve never had much interest in drinking and going out.”

The lifestyle, the modest apartment, all the way down to the mid-priced luxury sedan, it could be the stereotypical married life of a middle-aged man. It could be as much a stereotype as the drunken debauchery we’ve come to expect from young, brash professional athletes if Dempsey weren’t so young, his play so brash.

Bethany confirms the domestication when we speak after I returned to the U.S. “I remember in college,” she says. “People would be going out and Clint would be down at the soccer field, all alone a lot of the time, dribbling or shooting or running. For him free time means family, a few good friends, and probably fishing.”

The evening wears on with our conversation. At the moment Clint’s life has new intriguing possibilities. He’s newly married and financially secure. He can give back to the family that gave him so much, while starting his own. So what does he want? He just bought a nice watch, so I ask him what’s next. He selects nothing material. Even the house-hunting back in the U.S. is more about having a place away from the bustle of soccer to lay down some roots, raise a few kids, than it is about buying a mansion. It’s a ridiculous comparison, but I can’t stop thinking he could, if he wanted, be something much closer to the internet-leaked fast-life photo-op that has become standard operating procedure these days for many professional athletes. But then you realize he never received the platitudes and genuflections that help inflate the already confident egos of young athletes into the invincibility hallucinations that come with the highest orders of skill, fame, and money. He may or may not be one of the best, but for sure he’s rarely, if ever, treated that way.

“His goal was always to set foot on the field for the World Cup,” Ryan says. “That was it. He did that and it was time for the other stuff. He’s got all of his retirement in order. He’s been very disciplined and mature considering what he could be doing. You know footballers can get wild. I know I’d be out there getting in to all sorts of shit.”

But come on, Clint, you’re a soccer player in the E.P.L. That’s pretty dope, no?

He doesn’t disagree, but he also isn’t done making his point. “So you’re a writer,” Clint declares as if he’s found the equation. “That’s your thing. You write because you love it, right? You work at a magazine, but you probably didn’t start your career at the magazine you’re at now; you work your way up. There are a lot of magazines, a lot of writers. I bet there are a few magazines you might want to write for some day. So you write some stuff and maybe they publish it, maybe they don’t. Writing can be pretty subjective. Maybe somebody loves the same thing you do. Maybe they don’t. So you keep at it. You have to if you want to make it.”

“Everybody’s life is pretty much the same?” I say repeating a line of his from a previous conversation.

“And maybe you want to go to a different magazine,” Clint continues. “Maybe your skill set fits better there. Maybe they will appreciate you more. It’s no different with me, man. I was at the Revs, and it was no mystery at the end that I wanted out, but until you have an offer on the table, you can’t just tell the place your at to screw off.”

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In the summer of 2006 New England didn’t accept the first $1.5 million offer that came in from Charlton Athletic, so Clint stayed and begrudgingly helped the team make it to the playoffs before an ankle injury pushed him to the bench. It was a fitting end to a tumultuous year that saw Dempsey suspended twice for aggressive play and once for fighting with teammate Joe Franchino during a Revolution scrimmage. “Everybody changes and grows up and progesses,” Nicol says about that final year with Clint in New England. “You know part of your education is maturing as well, and obviously one of Clint’s goals was always to play at the highest level and that being the Premier League. And when one team came for him and we didn’t let him go, it frustrated him. There are very few people born on this earth who just have maturity straight off the bat, so he had to learn that you have to be patient and all the things that got you to the position of people offering, you keep doing those things and other offers will come. To his credit, he got over that, knuckled down and then got his other offer. He really matured over that spell, and kind of realized that some good things take time to come to you.”

“When MLS rejected the first bid,” Ryan says, “it was showing in his game. He wasn’t trying anymore. I was like ‘Clint, you don’t want to go to Charlton Athletic anyway and they really didn’t put up enough money for you. If I was MLS I would have definitely turned it down too. So don’t get so pissed off, it’s showing in your game dude.’”

Clint took his coach’s and brother’s advice and found an outlet on the national team. He was named 2006 Honda Player of the Year after scoring the only U.S. goal in the 2006 World Cup, and in 2007 he was named U.S. Male Soccer Athlete of the Year.

“You’re part of a team,” Clint explains. “But at the same time, you’re on your own. You can do the game, but once you can’t do it for the game anymore, the game don’t care.” Said with a strong Texas drawl, it is the hip hop hook. This is the Clint Dempsey everyone thinks they know: hard and rough, his age possibly peeking through with his choice of phrasing, his choice to take it all so personally. “For you, you’re only good as your last article, the last thing you write,” Clint says finishing his analogy. “I’m only as good as my last game. So in the big scheme of things, what does that mean?”

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It means different things to different people at different times. That’s life. In early 2007 it meant a then-record $4 million transfer fee to Fulham from the Revolution. Though it has yet to be determined whether or out Fulham will be the long term home for Dempsey and his certain blend of attributes, that transfer and subsequent contract means he can look forward again, even to retirement, he says, by the age of 33, maybe. “Don’t be surprised, but don’t hold me to it.”

Though it’s clear the roller coaster ride up and down the Fulham depth chart has taken away some of the joy of the game, there is plenty Clint still wants to do on the soccer field. But he has so little control over that, and it’s just that there is this 16-acres in North Carolina he found on the internet, not far from his wife’s family and his younger brother Lance, and well, it’s a good time to buy—his salary and the real estate market being what they are. So he looks forward to that. The first order of business after the season ends is checking it and other options out. Fulham’s or his own soccer future won’t change that in Clint’s mind, so at the apex of a trying season he is smiling and excited. There are two ponds to fish on, he shows me, pointing at a satellite image of the property on his computer. “And room right here for a soccer goal, so I can play with my kids. Bethany likes the idea of being a soccer mom.”

When Clint met Bethany at Furman she was in a relationship, but during study hall they chatted. The casual conversations progressed to deeper subjects, like what they wanted out of life: a rural existence, kids, quiet. He just sort of tucked it away. “She had a boyfriend. It’s not like I was, ‘Hey, don’t you know I’m gonna be playing in the English Premiere League.’” While he was in Boston the two reconnected. They weren’t dating very long before they got engaged. Just shy of his one year anniversary, Clint’s explaining how quickly he knew she was the one when his cell phone rings. It’s Bethany calling from the States. Clint hands me the remote and I lose him for awhile.

When he returns with another Capri-Sun, we get sucked into watching Cool Hand Luke on the TV. Before it’s over, I feel like I should leave. We make plans for a round of golf after practice the next day; he asks me if I had fun. I tell him I am a little surprised to find everything so normal, so squared away. He’s right, I concede, save for him being a professional soccer player and all, our lives are pretty similar.

For a young man who throughout his short career has been tagged as the Bad Boy, England seems to have spawned a more mature Clinton Drew Dempsey. “Deuce” is the nickname that dates back to the day when his preferred jersey number was 2, when he was making hip hop videos captured through grimy filters before rapper Big Hawk was killed. It was only a few years ago, but so much has changed. The nickname might not fit anymore. He hasn’t worn the number 2 in years. He’s still that kid with a chip on his shoulder, the slang vocabulary still entrenched, but it’s ever so slightly below the surface now. There’s a new layer. “I was into doing all that stuff because I thought I had to,” he says of his time leading up his European transfer. “I had to get mine, get paid. I got through that time and now I have new goals.”

It’s family man Clint Dempsey, no need for the hustle.

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check back in the coming days for the conclusion

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New England Revolution Dempsey photo October 2006 courtesy of ISI Photos

TIAS and Clint Dempsey are both sponsored by Nike.

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SIDEBAR

When I met Clint after practice my third day with him there were two adult Englishmen skipping work to stalk the training grounds’ gates for autographs, approaching players in their cars as they left (Jimmy Bullard, above). They were nice and jovial, one wore a Boston Red Sox cap; neither were Fulham fans. Both were more than a little embarrassed that I had been there to capture their childish endeavours but it didn’t stop them from doing what they had come to do. They definitely came prepared. View all the photos from my trip to England at TIAS Flickr.