Pride Cometh After the Fall
A funny thing happened to Italian soccer Thursday night down the road from the Forum. Italy won a World Cup game by only one goal against--holy Pele!--the United States of America, a nation that, as by now we all know, has meant to world-class soccer every bit as much as Saudi Arabia has meant to ice hockey.
While it might not seem like much, losing respectably as opposed to winning, for America’s team to come within 1-0 of prohibitive favorite Italy was a matter of honor, of self-respect, of not having the United States to kick around anymore.
It was meaningful enough to David Vanole and John Stollmeyer, neither of whom would even be in the U.S. starting lineup, that they huddled their teammates together--without the coaches--before leaving for the stadium Thursday and, in no uncertain terms, appealed to each of them: “Do you have any pride? Where’s your pride?”
It was meaningful enough to forward Bruce Murray that, as he emphasized afterward: “You just don’t want people thinking they can kick you, smack you around, run right by you, get away with absolutely anything against you. And you don’t want the soccer world thinking you’re a joke. You can’t have people treating you like garbage.”
It was meaningful enough to goalkeeper Tony Meola that he still couldn’t forget the way certain Czech players “were laughing at us, laughing right in my face” during last week’s totally humiliating 5-1 U.S. defeat. “I never want anybody to do anything like that to me or to any American team again,” Meola said Tuesday at training camp, before the team took off for Rome.
And so, they hurled themselves into it, body and soul. When Italy’s Gianluca Vialli was aiming a penalty kick, U.S. midfielder John Harkes needled him unmercifully in Spanish, because Harkes didn’t speak any Italian but hoped Vialli might understand Spanish.
At this very moment, Chris Sullivan called aside everyone else on the American bench. “Come on, squeeze together!” Sullivan coaxed. “Everybody hold hands!”
Everybody did. Sullivan, Vanole, Stollmeyer, Chris Henderson, Steve Trittschuh, Brian Bliss, every man over there clasped hands for luck. They did everything but click their soccer boots together while chanting: “There’s no place like Rome, no place like Rome.”
And Vialli’s penalty kick?
It bonked off a goal post, missing a score by inches.
“Hey, sometimes a little faith can work wonders,” Sullivan said.
Murray found himself in complete agreement, denying in one breath that a close defeat can be as good as a victory, then admitting in the next that losing honorably sure is better than the disgrace of taking an internationally witnessed pounding.
“Do I see this as a victory for us? No,” Murray said. “We’re not going to make this out to be some kind of big moral victory. But yeah, I think maybe more people respect us now. Maybe this even helps us believe in ourselves again.
“That’s why our meeting was so important,” Murray said. “There was a lot of interesting verbiage thrown around, a lot of it you wouldn’t be able to print. But the gist of it was, teammates turning to one another and saying: ‘Look, I’d die for you. Would you die for me?’ In other words, if I’m going out there to give everything I’ve got tonight, are you going to be out there doing the same or dogging it on me?”
From the very first floater by Jimmy Banks into the Italy goalkeeper’s mitts to the very last shot by Marcelo Balboa that flew a few feet over the net, the Americans banded together. They played patiently, almost painstakingly. They got some good luck, as on the penalty kick. They got some bad luck, as when Peter Vermes missed the equalizer by a foot, maybe two--a shot that would have been heard ‘round the World Cup.
And for 90 minutes, Italians agonized. Good thing alcohol sales were suspended on match day. Had they not been, Rome police this morning would still be fishing Fiats out of the Mediterranean.
Before 73,423 paisans , Italy’s national team set out to do a number--a double-digit number, if possible--on those comical little Americans who gave up five goals to Czechoslovakia. But when these droopy faces went filing out of Stadio Olympico, there was just one mocking Roman numeral up there on the scoreboard for all to see:
I.
Italy I. That’s how it read. And true, Italy won. It just wasn’t the goal-a-minute goleada everybody here seemed to be expecting. The accident waiting to happen never happened. The Italians did not stomp the Americans like so many grapes. One goal might have been all they needed, but it was all they got.
“Did we think they would slaughter us?” Murray asked, echoing a question. “No, we didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Because we know what can happen in soccer. For example, the other day we saw Costa Rica beat Scotland. Costa Rica won a game in the World Cup, and looked pretty good doing it, and let me tell you something--we can thump Costa Rica, and you can print that .”
