Just Having a Shot Is OK by Wynalda
He still doesn’t know for sure if he will get to set foot on the World Cup soccer fields of Italy in June, but now, more than ever, Eric Wynalda of Westlake Village understands what it would mean to him to be there. He has known it ever since he scored the United States’ only goal in a game against Colombia on Feb. 4 at Miami, which marked his very first appearance with the national team.
“I never thought the national anthem could become a religious experience,” said Wynalda, who left San Diego State to concentrate solely on soccer. “Maybe nobody knows what that feels like until the day you actually get to play something for your country.”
The United States has been booked worldwide as anywhere from a 500-1 to a 1,000-1 longshot to win the World Cup, but Wynalda would like to be on the premises, just in case. Nobody thought the 1980 hockey team could win in the Winter Olympics, either.
“Hey, I still believe in miracles,” he said. “Nobody thought Buster Douglas had a shot, either.”
A rather striking striker with long, blond hair, Wynalda was not among the Americans who saved the day on Nov. 19 by beating Trinidad and Tobago, 1-0, thereby qualifying for the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. He wasn’t one of them until Coach Bob Gansler ran a tryout camp two months later in La Jolla, during which Wynalda impressed him enough to earn an invitation to Miami for the Marlboro Cup.
The United States was having trouble scoring goals. It had gone scoreless for 238 miserable minutes between the seventh and 10th qualifying matches of the World Cup, before Paul Caligiuri’s memorable goal in Trinidad. It had scored only 11 goals in 10 games--five of them in one contest against Jamaica.
Gansler’s hair was getting grayer by the day. He was tired of scoreless ties. He also was irritated by certain members of the media branding him as too conservative a coach and saying that he played too defensive a style. There was nothing wrong with the U.S. team, the coach insisted, that a few well-placed kicks and a couple of lucky bounces couldn’t cure.
But, as Gansler later put it, once frustration sets in, after a while “the net starts to shrink.”
That’s why he continued searching for scorers. So, when Wynalda went to La Jolla in early January, he found himself among 26 other gifted players, all auditioning after one fashion or another for Gansler. Competition for roster spots was stiff. And not every top player was present. Hugo Perez, the fine midfielder whose goal won the El Salvador game, was, for example, off playing in Europe.
Jobs were available, but scarce. There were guys who had played in the Major Indoor Soccer League, guys who had excelled on the college level, guys who had already demonstrated their skills for Gansler in World Cup qualifying rounds, all hoping to score big with the coach.
“Everybody there was trying to prove some point,” Wynalda said. “All I could do was the best I could. I didn’t even know until I read it in the paper that (Gansler) regarded me as the No. 1 striker coming out of that camp. At least, that’s what I read.
“Everybody eventually has a sitdown with Bob Gansler, and when I had mine, I was on the edge of my seat. But by the time he took me to Miami, I felt that I had earned a chance to start. I proved to him that I can play at that level. I forced his hand a little to play me, or at least I hope I did.”
Wynalda responded with the team’s only goal against Colombia, beating an offside trap and scoring from 18 yards out. Later, he assisted on the lone U.S. goal in a 1-0 exhibition victory over a team from Bermuda. His decision to devote himself to soccer was paying off.
“I wasn’t happy at San Diego State,” Wynalda said. “It had nothing to do with the team there or the school itself. It was just me. It got to the point where I was playing and thinking soccer, and trying to get grades just to stay eligible. It wasn’t the proper way to attend college.
“I’d always envisioned myself as being a professional soccer player, and the time was right to address myself to that. Since I was 5, that’s all I ever wanted to do. And how many chances come along to play in a World Cup?”
Not many, for an American. Not any, since 1950.
Now, as the team travels to Tampa, Fla., this week for a tuneup game against Finland, Wynalda and his sidekicks wait--to see who gets to go to Italy. The coach is still looking for forwards to do more scoring. Wynalda thinks these are shoes he can fill.
If America is really a 1,000-1 shot, he’d like a piece of that action.
