Italian Fans Seeing Red : U.S. Star Defender Lalas a Hit After Bringing Popular Act, Mane to the World’s Best Soccer League

History loped onto the field here late Sunday afternoon, entering a newly finished stadium in a crisp white uniform and curly red ponytail. The most improbable hero in Italian soccer was suddenly a long way from Detroit.

Everything Alexi Lalas does at this point makes history, as the first U.S.-born player to take the field in the 94 years of the Italian first division, considered the world’s best professional soccer league.

Of all the players bred in America, Lalas might be the most unlikely candidate to be playing in Italy. But after laboring in the safe cocoon of indifference that is soccer in the United States, the 24-year-old central defender has been heaved into a whirlwind, thanks to his unexpected stellar performance on the U.S. team in the World Cup.

In the accelerating bandwagon of publicity--which emphasized his soccer-rocker musician image, the player with the cascading red hair and Uncle Sam goatee--Lalas’ soccer skills were obscured. The fact that he played every minute during the U.S. team’s World Cup campaign was obliterated. American sports fans could not tell you what position Lalas played but knew he played in a rock band.

The iconoclastic Lalas seems to have found a cosmic twin in Padova--a sad-sack team that, with some luck and great effort, raised itself from the second to the first division at the end of last season. Ecstatic fans were delirious with the promotion and they flocked by the thousands Sunday to see the newly opened Stadio Euganeo, where Padova lost for the second time in as many games this season. Seemingly destined for the bottom of the league standings, the club is not expected to remain in the first division, even its most ardent fans say.

But everyone, including Lalas, is enjoying the ride and the fans are soft on the team that has brought world-class soccer to this university town 30 miles west of Venice. Fans remain proud and enthusiastic, united by their infatuation for the team’s first foreign player.

WELCOME TO EUROPE, NOW DROP DEAD

Lalas’ first week in professional soccer went like this: A 5-0 drubbing by Sampdoria in Padova’s season opener on Sept. 4. With the U.S. team three days later, a 2-0 loss to England at Wembley Stadium. And on Sunday, a 3-0 loss to Parma in Padova’s first game in its new stadium.

English reporters, in particular, have been lying in wait for Lalas since the World Cup.

An ugly debate rages as two U.S. players wait for work permits to play in the English leagues. Several are already playing in England, barely tolerated, and there is a sense of impending invasion of “the home game” by burly American players.

Lalas’ sin was in snubbing the English Premier League and going directly to the prestigious Italian first division, in which few English players have been able to make it.

Then Lalas played a sub-par game in Wembley and English writers feasted on his mistakes. The day after the game, newspapers rang with the chorus of I-told-you-so.

Columnist David Miller in the Times of London referred to Lalas as “a clumsy, top-heavy red lobster with ginger hair and purple shorts who was always arriving late when (Alan) Shearer received the ball. . . .

“How the Italians would pay substantial money for Lalas defies the imagination.”

Said Rob Hughes’ game story in the Times: “Lalas, the cult figure of America’s high summer, was inept to say the least. . . . Lalas groped like an uncoordinated ostrich. . . . It made one wonder again how the guitar-plucking Lalas could have persuaded leading clubs in Europe that he was worth 500,000 pounds for a one-year salary. It is ludicrous.”

The public was no less welcoming. The crowd at Wembley offered Lalas a baptism by ire. Alone among the Americans, Lalas was lustily booed each time he touched the ball.

After the game, Lalas acknowledged that he had heard the jeers, but offered a typically philosophical response.

“I’m a professional athlete and they pay me for what I want to do,” he said. “If being booed is the worst thing that ever happens to me, then that’s all right.”

Lalas is accustomed to being underappreciated. On his first day as a walk-on at Rutgers, he stood before the coach in a line with other freshmen. The coach walked down the line and ticked off the accomplishments of each player: “Three-time high school All-American. . . . Scored 119 goals in his career. . . . “ When the coach got to Lalas, he paused and said, “He’s from Michigan.”

“I always think, ‘Hey I really fooled them,’ ” Lalas said. “I’m the biggest con ever. They are going to give me a uniform? It was like that at Rutgers (where he won the Hermann Trophy in 1991), it was that way on the (1992) Olympic team. I’ve always had the I’ve-got-absolutely-nothing-to-lose attitude.

“When I made the choice to go to Italy, I knew there were going to be people who said, ‘This is incredible. I can’t believe there is a team that’s actually going to take a chance on him. Who do they think they are? I’ve been watching him for many years and he can’t do anything and he’s too slow and he doesn’t have the skills.’ I knew it was going to happen. And I (also) knew that there were a lot of people who believed in me and wanted me to succeed.

“So, when I came in, I wanted to be as humble as possible. And definitely not ride the summer’s success. I wanted to prove to them that I knew what the hell I was doing.”

THE DUDE SHTICK

Because the American public could not comfortably grasp the esoteric details of his hydraulic jumping ability and appreciate the nuances of playing defense, fans instead latched onto Lalas’ image. There was more information about his career as a musician than interest in his potential place on the World Cup team.

The attention lavished on Lalas and the U.S. World Cup team gave him some hint of what life must be like for soccer stars in the rest of the world.

“For a 24-year-old, growing up in the States, never to have soccer be what it is . . . “ Lalas said. “People suddenly cared about what it is you did. For the first time in your life to be respected for what you did as a profession. I love that whole culture. I knew after it that I wanted to continue being in that. I wanted to go someplace where that could happen.”

Before the phenomenon began in earnest, about a month before the start of the World Cup, Lalas was already a media favorite because of his provocative quotes. As more reporters began to cover the team, Lalas began to develop more of an image. Even as it was happening, he was aware of it and tried to maintain an honesty and not to become a caricature.

“In the States, we’re so jaded,” he said. “People are quick to pick up on things. Marketing and image-making--that would totally ruin my credibility. I always try to be honest. For me, the most important thing was to project that I was having fun, because I was. And to do it with intelligence and humor.

“I’d have these interviews where I could tell people wanted me to say dude and cowabunga. They wanted me to be the rock guy. I’ve had to make it up so much as I’ve gone along. It’s not like we grew up watching other soccer players or saw how they have handled it. When you talk to so many different people and you try to come off as intelligent, a lot of the time you end up saying the same witty answer over and over again and trying to make it sound spontaneous.

“I’m an American kid and I’m semi-intelligent and I know how it works, the image-making and all of that and what people grasp onto. I’m not naive in that sense.”

What Lalas didn’t know was how big it was all getting.

He went to the World Cup semifinal at the Rose Bowl as a spectator with his girlfriend, Jill McNeal. Outside the gates, he was besieged by fans and had to be extricated from the crowd by police.

“I was really afraid,” he said. “It was the first time it hit me. After the game, the police escorted us to my little car. And I thought, what has my life become? We had no idea how much we were out there and how much the American people picked up on us.”

HANGING OUT AT THE TOP

This week’s goal is a fax machine. And getting the oven fixed. Every time it is turned on, the lights in the apartment go out. Those are McNeal’s jobs and she has come up with a labor-frustration equation of 5-1: A task that would take one hour to complete in the United States takes five hours in Italy.

When Lalas asked her to accompany him to Italy, McNeal didn’t take long in quitting her job in Laguna Beach and joining Lalas in his new adventure.

“If he had gone to the North Pole to play, I would have gone,” she said. “The important thing is to be with him.”

The couple presented a problem for Catholic Italians.

“They want us to be married,” McNeal said. “No one wants to think we are living together. So, in the papers, I’m always referred to as Lalas’ fiancee, or I’m just Jill. No one has yet to use my surname.”

Lalas and McNeal are taking what comes here, much as Lalas has in his soccer career. Rather than moving into a large house in the country, as many teammates have, Lalas is renting a two-bedroom apartment close to the training facilities set in rolling green hills.

The couple has settled in and taken on all challenges with good humor and an unbridled optimism. Lalas is already wildly popular. His name is called out in the street. He signs autographs at his regular restaurant. Children like his exotic looks and adults admire his playing--Lalas is considered one of the best players on the team--and they respect his facility for the Italian language.

“Right now I’m playing in Serie A (the first division), and a year ago (World Cup Coach) Bora (Milutinovic) had us in a room watching tapes of it saying, ‘These are the best players in the world,’ ” Lalas said.

“I can’t be overwhelmed by it. I won’t let myself be overwhelmed by it. It’s one thing I’ve learned in traveling the world. Our sports view is so narrow. We are so arrogant. There’s a lot going on in the world. I’m just confident, that without soccer, everything is going to be OK.”

His experience as an overlooked player has helped mold Lalas’ attitude. He knows many critics expect him to fail. He knows that many think he got his job because of his hair style.

What Lalas also knows is that, should he fail, he will always be the first American to have played at this level. He has learned that, often, to try is enough. To not fear failure is to be truly courageous.

“So you’re going to walk on the moon,” he said, shrugging, laughing. “If your spaceship breaks down, you don’t go to the moon. You have to turn around and come back. People can say, ‘You didn’t walk on the moon.’ But you went into space, man. It’s perspective. That’s the only thing that matters to me.

“Of course I want to succeed. Of course I want to do well. But even if I fall flat on my face and I don’t do well and people hate me, they say, ‘This American can’t play and he was a fluke this summer,’ I could (not) care less. At least I tried it. And I was the first one. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it?”