Wynalda’s Dream Meets With Reality : Soccer: From his youth, he prepared to play in the World Cup. Then he watched the United States play Italy from the bench after being red-carded.

There was still some frustration in the voice of a young man who has been to Italy and back, chasing a dream that would become a haunting memory.

Eric Wynalda returned from the World Cup. He spent four days at home in Westlake Village last week before heading north to play for the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks in the Western Soccer League.

They were good days, he said, days he spent getting reacquainted with his home and his girlfriend. They went to the beach, out to breakfast and rested. He saw friends from home that he hadn’t seen in a while. He even ran into his high school principal.

They all congratulated him for being on the United States World Cup team, and they smiled and shook his hand. Hey, nice going. Attaboy.

Wynalda smiled and enjoyed the attention. He only wished he could have felt a little better about the whole thing.

You’ve heard of Eric Wynalda. If you haven’t, you’ve probably heard about him. You know, the United States player who was ejected from a World Cup game.

After a lifetime of preparing for the World Cup, it is suddenly over, and no matter how hard he tries to erase certain memories, he can’t. So instead of feeling exhilaration, or maybe a little bit of satisfaction in something that he and his mates accomplished, there are only frustration and anger and the feeling that some of it is still not real.

His team lost three consecutive games, and Wynalda was ejected from a game, which meant he couldn’t play in the next one, either.

“It was a dream for my entire life, and now to be tossed out of the first World Cup game of my life. . . ,” Wynalda said.

Of course, Wynalda did have some good experiences, in particular the soccer hysteria that bathed the U.S. team for three weeks, the rabid fans and the flags they waved and all of the pageantry that went along with it.

“It’s really something,” Wynalda said. “You walk through the streets and you have to have armed guards. (The Italian fans) don’t want to hurt you. They just want to see you.”

One vivid memory is of the United States’ game with Italy, which the U.S. lost, 1-0, before 73,423 fans, most of them Italians. Wynalda can’t forget his teammates’ faces when they took the field for the game of their lives. The noise of the crowd still rings in his ears and, from his vantage point, Wynalda could see the frustration in the Italians’ faces as the game wore on.

His vantage point was the bench. That was Eric Wynalda’s lost game.

He was given the red card early in the second half against Czechoslovakia two days earlier, while the United States was on its way to a 5-1 loss. It was June 10, the day after Wynalda’s 21st birthday.

The way he remembers it, a Czech player--Jozef Chovanec--backed into him and stepped on his foot. Wynalda said he saw it coming and claims he stuck his arms out to brace himself. Chovanec hit the ground and the linesman called Wynalda for a foul. Then the referee booted him. Wynalda claims the referee didn’t see it.

“I just kind of went, ‘Wow,’ ” Wynalda said. “It was pure shock. I really didn’t understand what happened. In soccer, it’s kind of like in baseball. You can go argue, but the referee won’t change his mind. The only thing I could do was be a man about it and walk off the field.”

Now, Wynalda thinks he was set up by the Czechs, and he said his coaches agreed with him after watching films. The motive? Earlier in the game, Wynalda was elbowed in the stomach, so he retaliated--but his elbow hit the face of a Czech player. And he believes the Czechs got him for it.

“The Czechs, they know what they’re doing,” Wynalda said.

The ejection also carried a $7,000 fine, which Wynalda said the U.S. Soccer Federation will pay. John Polis, director of communications for the USSF, said the organization is still awaiting word from FIFA, soccer’s governing body, regarding the fine. Since Joseph Blatter, FIFA’s general secretary, has said the ejection wasn’t warranted, the USSF is hoping the fine won’t be as steep.

Wynalda was also criticized publicly by U.S. Coach Bob Gansler after the game but said he didn’t blame Gansler.

“I think in his situation, he had to criticize me,” Wynalda said. “It wouldn’t be right for him to praise me. But he was great about it. He told me, ‘I know what you’re going through. You’re going to get a lot of attention you don’t want. Keep your head up.’ ”

But Wynalda is still bitter about being criticized by team captain Michael Windischmann.

“Wynalda, he’s younger,” Windischmann said. “He has to learn. You have to wait until later to retaliate if you feel you must. To outright push somebody, right in front of a linesman, I think it’s dumb and it doesn’t help us. And now he doesn’t get to play in the next game. It’s just dumb.”

Said Wynalda: “After the game, he blamed me for my inexperience, but he was the guy who brought somebody down in the penalty box for a penalty kick. I wasn’t.”

Windischmann’s penalty cost the U.S. team a goal.

Wynalda was already frustrated when the World Cup opened because he had been shifted from his forward position to the midfield. The switch was made during the U.S. team’s final games before the World Cup.

“I’ve maintained all along I’m not a midfielder,” Wynalda said. “I’m a forward being asked to play defense against some of the best players in the world. I would have rather sat the bench and come in during the last 15 minutes each game than play 45 minutes of pure running and defense.”

He didn’t have to worry about that in the Italy game. And by the time the United States played its final game, against Austria, it didn’t much matter anymore.

“It was a great feeling to at least walk into the locker room and see my uniform hanging again,” he said. “I wish the game were 20 minutes longer. The way we were playing and the chances we were creating, I think we would have won.”

But Austria won, 2-1, and for Wynalda, the rest of the World Cup took place in front of the television.

“You were just there a couple of days ago,” he said. “Now, you sit on the same old couch and watch the same TV. . . . It was like we were never there.”

The more he thought about it, the more disappointed and angry he felt.

“I think it would be wrong for any of us on the national team to be satisfied with what happened,” he said. “We lost. Some people say we earned respect. That isn’t the case. We went into the situation believing we could win. Now, (if) that that’s the case, we shouldn’t be satisfied with losing. . . .

“We wanted to give the U.S. something to be proud of. Everyone was looking to us to prove that the U.S. can be competitive. To lose three games is not being competitive.”

Now he is in San Francisco with another soccer life. The atmosphere with the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks isn’t World Cup, but Wynalda is having fun, working on his game and looking forward to the 1994 World Cup.

“As far as my World Cup went, it’s going to have to be a hell of a lot better in 1994 for me to forget about this one,” he said.

And then he told a story. When he got home from the World Cup, he had a belated birthday celebration--and his girlfriend’s mother gave him a birthday card. It had a red card in it.

He laughed.