On the Right Path
In a cellblock somewhere in the United States, a young man named Chancy sits and listens to time tick slowly away.
For him, the World Cup might as well be on the moon. Somewhere in the past, Chancy made a wrong turn. He went one way and his best friend, Eddie Johnson, went the other.
Johnson, 22, the youngest player on the U.S. World Cup team, is in Germany, preparing for the United States’ all-important third World Cup match, against Ghana on Thursday. He played less than a half in the opening loss to the Czech Republic and watched in frustration from the bench when the U.S. tied Italy.
With any luck, Johnson will get the chance Thursday to have his own impact on the World Cup.
It could easily have been Chancy. Let Johnson tell the story.
“I had a buddy of mine who I grew up with in the same projects,” Johnson began.
“His name was Chancy. He’s incarcerated right now. He was an unbelievable athlete. He always had the talent but always would do bad things and wasn’t making good decisions.”
One of Chancy’s better decisions was to join Johnson on the soccer field, at least for a little while.
“If he was still playing, he’d probably be in the same position as I am because he picked it up so quick,” Johnson said. “I was like, ‘Man, if this kid would have started when I did, he’d have been unbelievable.’ ”
Johnson has been something of an eye-opener himself.
The kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Bunnell, Fla., the kid with the single mom, the kid who had to make do on food stamps and handouts, the kid who hung out with the wrong crowd and almost paid the price, is riding high and aiming higher.
On the U.S. team Johnson is the fastest and, along with defender Oguchi Onyewu, the one seen with the most upside.
If Johnson can make a good impression in Germany, it could be his ticket to a European club and all the fame and financial security such a move brings. Not that Johnson is hurting. He is the third-highest-paid player in Major League Soccer, earning about $875,000 a year playing for the Kansas City Wizards.
That’s a far cry from his childhood and teenage days in Bunnell.
“When I go back home now, it’s funny because I can picture myself as a little kid asking the older people for money. ‘You got two dollars?’ Two dollars was a lot. If you got a dollar, you could go to like the corner store and buy some bubble gum,” Johnson said.
“I’m not going to lie, a lot of those guys weren’t good education-wise,” he said. “They don’t come from balanced families, so they’re doing whatever they’ve got to do to keep money in their pockets.”
Johnson recalls “almost getting in trouble” just because of the company he kept. He remembers being beaten once for no reason.
“I got jumped by like 10 guys and got punched in the back of the head. I had to get my ear stitched up. Stuff like that.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, this is not for me.’ ”
It was a youth soccer coach, Bob Sawyer, who helped put Johnson onto his career path after Johnson had met Sawyer’s son in summer camp.
“They brought me in like a second son to their family and gave me everything I didn’t have,” Johnson said.
Sawyer saw the potential, saw the speed.
“I played a lot of sports -- baseball, basketball, Pop Warner football,” Johnson said.
“Back home we used to always do relay races through the projects, and I had some fast friends. I wasn’t always the fastest one.
“We used to do this thing, we used to ... run from the dogs.”
He laughs. “Nah, I never got caught.”
Soccer caught him though. He rose through the youth ranks, attended U.S. Soccer’s youth academy in Bradenton, Fla., played for the under-17, under-20 and under-23 national teams, scoring 37 goals in 51 games. He made his full national team debut against El Salvador in 2004.
Johnson scored eight goals in his first nine games for the U.S. Portuguese power Benfica made a multimillion-dollar offer for him, which MLS rejected. Then came a broken big toe, months on the sideline and a goal drought that has yet to end.
He resurfaced at the U.S. training camp at the Home Depot Center in January and proved that he belonged on the roster for Germany ’06.
If there is anyone on the U.S. team who can understand where Johnson has come from, it is midfielder Clint Dempsey of Nacogdoches, Texas.
“Coming from an environment like myself and Clint, with Clint living in a trailer in the back of his grandma’s yard, and me being in the projects where there was nothing to do, mom was on food stamps, once you get the chance to do all of this traveling, you look at it as your way out,” Johnson said.
“You work hard to get to where you are and try to make the best of it. You don’t want to stop there. You want more.”
Like Dempsey, the rest of the U.S. players appreciate what Johnson brings to the squad.
“He’s our only guy who has a combination of size and speed,” Landon Donovan said. “So you’ve got Brian [McBride], who you know is going to hold the ball and win headers, you’ve got Brian Ching, who you know is going to hold the ball and win headers, and Wolffie [Josh Wolff] is the quick-running guy. But Eddie does it all. So if you can get that on the field, he’s dangerous in a lot of ways.”
Said teammate DaMarcus Beasley: “It’s definitely a good story. It’s kind of like rags to riches....
“His mentality was that he wanted to be a professional football player, and he stuck to it. That’s good. That shows a lot of character for him to do that. He’s a good player and a growing talent.”
Johnson says he sees himself following Beasley to Europe. It’s only a matter of time.
“Not to take anything away from MLS, because MLS has gotten me to where I am,” Johnson said. “But the next step in getting to where I want to be is playing against the best players in the world, and that’s playing in Europe.”
On Thursday, Johnson and Dempsey can take another step in that direction. In the meantime, they are role models for other youngsters.
And Chancy?
“I haven’t talked to him since he’s been incarcerated,” Johnson said. “But he’s still my friend. I don’t change because of whatever is going on in my life. My friends are my friends. If I see him, that’s it. It’s ‘How you doing? You OK?’ That’s it.”
