World Cup ‘94: 10 Days and Counting : Dooley Finds Personal Kind of Dream Team

You can be inspired by a new light, and you can generate a new force enabling you to realize your hopes and make all your dreams come true. Decide now to make your life grander, greater, richer and nobler than ever before.

“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind,” by Joseph Murphy

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His brother was older, bigger and better. He worked harder. He ran every day, even if the family was on vacation, even if it was snowing, even when his body begged him to stay in bed. Steven told his younger brother, “Thomas, you must work harder.”

Thomas Dooley said, “Yes, I must set a goal.” He wanted to be like his brother. He wanted to be like the third-division soccer player who was the hero of his small German town. Both players could run, so Thomas would run, too.

His goal became to run from his town to the next, uphill, three miles. The first day he ran along the road for one mile and couldn’t go on. Tomorrow, he thought, my goal is to go 100 meters farther.

For three weeks Thomas tried running to the next town, each day getting closer. He set his goal at running to the sign denoting the city limits.

“I will never forget this,” Thomas Dooley said. “The last 200 yards I saw the sign. My legs were dead. I thought, ‘I am so tired but I have to go on.’ I hit the sign and I said, ‘Yeah! I got my goal.’ It was like Rocky in the movie.”

It’s a fitting reference for a man who grew up in Germany yearning for America, whose personal philosophy so well meshes with the American notion that if you work hard, then you can begin to achieve your dreams.

Dooley, a new American citizen and the most experienced player on the U.S. World Cup soccer team, is living his dream every day. His dream’s edges have been pushed to places where he willed them and his goals--ever changing--are met daily with a headlong rush of enthusiasm.

His life has been so profoundly altered that he can’t even see where he came from, only where he wants to go.

*

Change your thoughts and you change your destiny.

“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind”

*

Something was missing and Thomas Dooley was troubled by the loss. He was 17 and he had been dutifully doing what was expected of him all his life. He was moving, but he had no direction.

“My brother and I were playing on a team in the worst league, the 11th division,” he said. “Every Friday and Saturday night we went to a discotheque and drank beer and smoked. It’s normal, but the next day we had a game. We talked about this and decided no more drinking and no more smoking. I have to work. I need more training. I need a plan.”

He planned to get out of the life he was in. He was a highly skilled toolmaker, working from 6 a.m. until 2:30. Then he went home and watched television and played soccer. At that rate, he was going to do, for the rest of his life, what his uncles and his stepfather had done: What was expected, day after monotonous day.

Something was missing. One day a friend called Dooley to his office and sat him down.

“Is this what you are going to do with your life, work at a factory?” his friend asked. “Don’t you want more?”

He handed Dooley a small paperback book, “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind,” by Joseph Murphy.

Dooley read the book. And re-read it. He carried it with him and read certain parts during the day. He had found a plan. He had a goal. He would change his life. He would quit the factory and go to the university and study architecture and he and Steven would move up to a higher soccer league, where there were good fields to play on and real linesmen.

He changed the way he saw his world and the way he thought about it.

Along the way, inevitably, he saw that his world had changed. He began to notice that those around him always talked about what they couldn’t do, what was not possible and how they had failed. Dooley only wanted to be around positive-thinking people. He became aware that his infectious good nature was at odds with the manner of the majority, those who would not look one another in the eye and brooded on their bad luck.

“In America, anything is possible,” Dooley said, sitting in the bright sunshine of the U.S. team’s training complex in Mission Viejo. “In Germany, most people look only one way. They say, ‘I can’t do that.’ I say, ‘Why can’t you do that? You can do everything. You only have to believe in it and you have to do something.’

“Germany is a small country and a good business country. The business leaders are guys like Americans--they think positive. They have goals. I changed my mentality. I began to think that way.”

With his book as his guide and a head full of goals, Dooley set out on his new life. He had dreamed of playing in a higher division and soon he and Steven were sold to a third-division club. Then he moved to FC Homburg in the second division.

Then, as his goals and dreams began to come true, Dooley was at last in the Bundesliga, the highest level for a professional player in Germany. He was a central defender at FC Kaiserslautern, the club’s captain. The only goal left in soccer was to play for his national team.

But which one?

*

To forgive is to give something for. Give love, peace, joy, wisdom and all the blessings of life to the other, until there is no sting left in your mind.

“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind”

*

Where does a boy with a freckle-faced name like Thomas Dooley find a home in Bavaria? How is it to be a Tommy in a flock of kids named Wolfgang and Manfred?

He might have gone to his father with those questions but Dooley’s father, an American serviceman stationed in Germany, left his wife and two young sons a year after Thomas was born. He returned to the United States and the family never heard from him again. After his first birthday, Dooley never saw his biological father, not even in a photograph.

Thus, it was strange when Dooley grew up with decidedly American predilections. He loved American muscle cars, he chewed bubble gum, he listened to American rock ‘n’ roll and he dreamed of going on vacation to a ranch in Montana, one with horses and real cowboys.

His wife, Elke, grew up with Dooley and said he has always displayed a fondness for this country.

“I always say it’s his American blood,” she said. “He was always interested in America. He read books about it and watched American things on television. He loves American cars. Sometimes he wore crazy clothes like Americans.”

Dooley’s longing was never completely clear to him. One day he was driving and saw an American sports car. He followed the car until he got lost. He dreamed about the car. Not long afterward, he bought a 1977 Corvette.

When he was about 11 his mother married Horst Niebergall, a German.

“This was my dad,” Dooley said. “He was good to us. When I needed someone, he was there to talk to. He was a soccer player, too. He spent a lot of time with us.

“About the time I started thinking about my (American) father, that I didn’t have a dad and that my dad was American and I missed him, I got my German dad. We had a great connection. We have a wonderful relationship.”

Dooley said he has never been angry about being abandoned. Years later, he and his brother talked about going to America to look for their father, simply to talk. Dooley’s mother wrote to various addresses but received no answer.

Dooley’s brother frequently traveled to the United States and in each town he looked in the phone book for Courtney Joseph Dooley.

“Steven tried to find him,” Dooley said. “It was an adventure to go to America and find out our history and what was going on before. We were not angry. We would not say to him, ‘Yeah, you left our mother at a bad time.’

“We talked about going to America. We made up stories about finding our father. Maybe we would go and knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, this is us and we want to talk to you.’ Small talk. Like, ‘How do you live and what is your job right now? How is America and who are your friends?’ Only small talk, not more. In America, someone could come up and say, ‘I’m your cousin.’ I did meet an aunt when the team was in Seattle. We drank coffee and talked. It was nice.”

The Dooley brothers did finally get news of their father. He died in 1986 and is buried in San Francisco.

*

You are the captain of your soul and the master of your fate. Remember, you have the capacity to choose. Choose life! Choose health! Choose happiness!

“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind”

*

The phone rang at 4 in the morning and Elke Dooley remembers being alarmed. But Thomas was smiling into the receiver.

Dooley told her he had been asked to play for the U.S. national team. “Now your dream comes true,” she said. “You can go to America. And I will go with you.”

Dooley had been overlooked by the German national team because of injuries. At 33, it was not likely that the German federation was ever going to call.

On that night in December of 1991, his decision was instantaneous, but he was concerned about the effect of the move on Elke and their sons, Marko, 13, and Dennis, 2.

“Sometimes in your life, you must take a risk to come forward,” Dooley says. “I know that this is not a risk. But people in Germany said to us, ‘You go to America but you can’t speak English. The American team is not so good, you can play here.’ But no, my decision was to go to America. We go.”

It was a decision that thrilled U.S. soccer officials and cost Dooley about $300,000 a year in salary. His answer is that he doesn’t care. His answer is that he can drive to practice in the morning and see the palm trees in the sunshine and smell the ocean air. He can go home and be with his wife and family. He is setting and reaching his goals.

Dooley is, at last, in a place where he fits in. In his ardent love for what he perceives as the American dream, he has become more American than most.

“Success is when you have a problem and clear the problem,” he said. “My goal here was to be successful on the national team. Then for our team to be successful. Then become one of the best players on the team. I got the 1993 player-of-the-year (award). That was a goal.

“I am proud to play for the U.S. team. Now, my goal is that the people who are interested in soccer will be proud of us after the World Cup. When we come to the second round, that will be a success.”

World Cup Player at a Glance

Name: Thomas Dooley.

Born: May 12, 1961, Bechhofen, Germany.

Height: 6-feet-1.

Weight: 168 pounds.

Position: Defender-midfielder.

Club: Kaiserslautern.

National team debut: May 30, 1992, vs. Ireland.

Caps (international matches): 39.

Goals scored: Four.

Little-known fact: An architecture student in college, he designed his home.

Honors: Voted best player at Homburg four consecutive years. Led Kaiserslautern to the German Cup title in 1990 and the German championship in 1991. U.S. male soccer athlete of the year in 1993.