America’s Own : For One Day at Least, Paul Caligiuri Will Be One of the Best in the World
Meet Paul Caligiuri, Our Guy:
He’s 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds. Blue eyes, blond hair. Schooled at UCLA. Appreciates Bill Murray and Robert DeNiro. Be-bops to The Cars and Earl Klugh. Was inspired by “Chariots of Fire.” Prefers McDonald’s to Burger King, and eats his Chunky soup with a spoon, not a fork.
All of which means nothing except that he’s an American. And that, in itself, means everything when you consider that Caligiuri is a teammate of Diego Maradona, most valuable player on Argentina’s World Cup-winning soccer team.
On Sunday, when the FIFA/UNICEF World All-Star Game is beamed from the Rose Bowl to millions of television viewers in 65 countries, the world will wonder who in the world Paul Caligiuri is. When the teams first practice on Thursday, so might Maradona, France’s Michel Platini, Mexico’s Hugo Sanchez, and even his coaches, Mexico’s Bora Milutinovic and Argentina’s Carlos Bilardo. Until Caligiuri was selected as America’s representative, they hadn’t heard of him.
Had you?
The journalists, whose job it is to keep up with such matters, hadn’t. At a press conference in Mexico City during the World Cup, Caligiuri was announced as a team member. Minutes later, one foreign journalist took care of what his several hundred colleagues from around the globe were too embarrassed to do.
“Could you please repeat the name of the American?” he said.
To say that Caligiuri got here by winning on Ed McMahon’s Star Search might be unfair, however. He is, after all, as promising as any U.S. player. He led UCLA to the national championship last year and finished third in the MVP voting. And as a fullback, he scored the winning goal when the United States beat Trinidad and Tobago, 1-0, in 1986 World Cup qualifying.
But as long as Costa Rica, which eliminated the United States, can look down its nose at American soccer, who’s going to take Paul Caligiuri seriously?
He knows he is the only world all-star who’s not a world star. The organizer of the game, George Taylor, figured that the host country should at least have one representative. He narrowed the list to Caligiuri and Ricky Davis, the former New York Cosmos midfielder from San Clemente who played in the 1982 World All-Star Game at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
Davis, who now plays for the St. Louis Steamers of the Major Indoor Soccer League, had the experience edge but also the negative rub of being an indoor player. Caligiuri, though, was as much an athlete as Davis, and just as local, having grown up in Diamond Bar.
The selection was based on more than locale and ability, though. Taylor wanted someone presentable, a guy with a nice haircut and firm handshake. In May, they met at a Pasadena restaurant.
“I had never seen Paul Caligiuri,” Taylor said. “I just wanted to make sure we were dealing with not only a good player, but someone who at least speaks all right and doesn’t have all these crazy ideas.
“I think kids in the U.S. will find him a good role model, and he’s very handsome.”
With that dubious compliment, Paul Caligiuri became Our Guy, heir apparent to Kyle Rote Jr. and Ricky Davis as America’s focal soccer player.
“It’s almost like a Walter Mitty story,” said Sigi Schmid, his coach at UCLA. “It’s something he’s always dreamed about. For years, he’s been reading in soccer papers from all over the world about these guys. When Paul walks out there (on the Rose Bowl turf) it’s going to seem like it’s not real. He’s going to need someone to pinch him or pour a bucket of water on him.”
Caligiuri, though, thinks of himself as more than the token act squeezed between Sting and U2 at an Amnesty International concert. In fact, he is taking this quite seriously. As Our Guy, he not only wants to show well in this game, but eventually pull American soccer out of the slums.
How will a 22-year-old college student do that? Caliguiri’s aim is to become one of first Americans to play on a top-level European club team, to do what West Germans Uwe Blab and Detlef Schrempf did in the National Basketball Assn.
After that, Caligiuri hopes that American players will be better received overseas, that the United States will qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and that eventually the sporting public will support a successor to the North American Soccer League.
Too optimistic? Grandiose? Well, he said, someone has to get the, um, ball rolling.
“I’ve always been a very serious person toward the sport,” Caligiuri said. “I don’t speak in frustration, because I get a lot of joy from the sport, but I hope I can make it succeed.
“It seems to me the rest of the world is waiting for the United States, knowing that we have the best athletes in the world, knowing we’re powers in every sport, to come out and play this game, this prestige game.”
Schmid said there is a tremendous itch among American players to prove something to the world. But with Caligiuri, there is a commissioner’s sense of direction. He talks profusely of why American soccer is impoverished, and how and when it will rise above that state.
“It all goes back to our educational institutions,” he said. “That has a lot to do with how we develop our athletes.”
It is too soon to begin club systems similar to those in baseball, Caligiuri suggests. Moreover, education would then be sacrificed.
“We should continue to give kids the opportunity to go to college, then establish a stable outdoor league,” he said. “Keep the Americans, but at the same time allow a couple of foreigners.
“All in all, our system’s different, and we have to stick with it and develop it. I’m not out to make soccer the best sport in the United States. I just want a system so that when a player reaches his peak at 30, he can look back and say, ‘I had a good career.’ ”
Currently, the highest level of outdoor soccer rests in such semi-pro regional leagues as the Western Soccer Alliance, which has four of its seven teams in California. Most players are paid about $1,200 a month and games are often held in high school stadiums, said Caligiuri, who plays for the San Diego Nomads.
Growing up, he was always a fan of the Los Angeles Aztecs and California Surf. He dreamed of playing in the North American Soccer League.
“I used to wonder what state I’d go to, or what city,” he said. “You know, ‘I’d better go somewhere warm,’ and that stuff. Now it doesn’t matter. It’s all indoors, so the weather’s the same everywhere.”
Resignation has never comforted Caligiuri, though. In 1984, he spent months on the U.S. Olympic developmental team but was cut 12 days before the Games because the new coach, Alkis Panagoulias, preferred using professionals.
Now, though he says he is not bitter about that move, Caligiuri is on the hot seat as America’s most visible star. The immense exposure he will receive from the All-Star game could earn him a job overseas.
“Obviously, this is something tremendous on his resume, to say that he played in the World All-Star game,” Schmid said. “But he’s not going to get selected on the basis of one game. Then again, if he walks in there and shuts down some big star,well . . .
“I have no doubt that he can go overseas, and once he gets used to the play over there, star in those leagues. He’s by far the best athlete I’ve ever coached. His speed, his ability to get up in the air. He can strike a ball with his right foot and his left foot. He’s extremely intense.
“When he puts his mind to it that he wants to shut down a player, he will. I’ve seen him do it.”
After embarrassing say Platini or Italy’s Bruno Conti, though, he’d like to get their autographs and maybe a picture.
