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AmericansAbroad

Phone 619 335 8715 Web xiquarterly.com

Email hello@xiquarterly.com Twitter @xiquarterly

Editors

Tom Dunmore

tom@xiquarterly.com David Keyes david@xiquarterly.com Art Director

Joseph Liam Murtaugh liam@xiquarterly.com

Copy Editors

Daryl Grove, Dan Martin Interns

Alicia Ratterree, Mike Rodriguez Contributors

Brian Blickenstaff, Justin Bryant, Stanley Chow, Chris Gaffney, Xavier Hernandez, Bob Kellett, Asher Kohn, Dan Leydon, Tom McCabe, Gwendolyn Oxenham Illustrator

Rachel Anne Jones Print

Angel Lithographing Sturtevant, Wisconsin USA

Special Thanks

Roger Allaway, Cleo’s Bar & Grill, Jennifer Doyle, Colin Jose, Kicking & Screening, Steven D. Lenhart, Tom Nickel, O’Briens Pub, Pablo Miralles, San Diego American Outlaws, Section 8 Chicago

XI QUARTERLY

XI QUARTERLY WILL RETURN IN

Futbol Americano winter 2012-13

fall 2012

This iseleven,a northamericansoccerquarterly.

Pioneering North Americans Alexi Lalas, Hugo Sánchez, Craig Forrest

Stanley Chow illustrations

Out of the ‘Lost Generation’ Growing up where sympathy is scarce

Justin Bryant

Global Direction An American woman expands the game’s reach

Bob Kellett

Brincadeira The fearless joy of futbol feminino in Brazil

Gwendolyn Oxenham

Preston’s Plan The heartstopping road to Darmstadt

Brian Blickenstaff words Tom Sekula photography

‘Yankee! Cowboy! Fenian Bastard!’ Bridging the schism at Rangers Football Club

Tom McCabe

The Games That Weren’t America’s false starts on the way to international soccer

Tom Dunmore

Red Lions and Black Widows The life of Taiwan’s 1997 Player of the Year

Chris Gaffney

A Curious Outpost The Tijuana Xolos, uniting the borderlands

David Keyes words Xavier Hernandez photography

Portraits of African Soccer A twentieth-century American lens

Eliot Elisofon photography

Baku to Krasnodar (via Los Angeles)Yura Movsisyan’s journey

Asher Kohn words Dan Leydon illustrations

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At the Back

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REGULARS

14

Out of the ‘LostGeneration’

Justin Bryant

Growing up where sympathy is scarce

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One thing I hadn’t prepared for was all the yelling.

over the course of three years, I was yelled at by team-mates, managers and fans. I was yelled at by the young and the old, by men and women. I was yelled at during games, at halftime, after games and in training. A manager once called me at home to both wish me a Merry Christmas and then to yell at me. Such an anec-dote would be easy to fabricate. I assure you: it really happened.

II

16 Americans Abroad

II Out of the ‘Lost Generation’

Just as American letters had a “lost generation,” expat writ-ers drinking themselves away in Paris cafés following World War One, American soccer had a lost generation of its own: players who came of age after the demise of the NASL, but long before the rise of MLS. Those unfortunates had two equally difficult options if they wanted to eke out a living playing professionally: Make the best of several fly-by-night semipro leagues (including—God forbid—indoor soccer), or head for shores where the game was popular and thriving. So it was that I ended up with teammates but no real friends, a team but no contract, a job but no career. I was a goalkeeper and an American abroad.

Playing abroad in the late 1980s and early 1990s—in my case, England and Scotland—meant dealing with the stigma of coming from a nation not known for producing footballers. Things have changed; a young player trying his luck today reaps the benefits of two generations of successful trailblazers—the likes of John Harkes, Claudio Reyna, Brad Friedel and Clint Dempsey, to name just a few—to help mitigate some of that stigma. I had no such luck; there were not yet any trailblazers, nor was I destined to become one; as I was not, by any objective standard, successful.

My portal to football in Britain came in 1988 at Boreham Wood FC, a proudly unglamorous non-League club in Hertfordshire, just north of London. I had been playing for the Orlando Lions, a team in-between leagues, and the manager, Mark Dillon, was friends with Boreham Wood manager John Drabwell. Mark knew I wanted (and needed) to improve. He and John spoke, and I ended up at a Boreham Wood training session straight after a nine-hour flight from Miami. I learned one lesson very quickly at Boreham Wood: nobody cares about you until you prove you can play.

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This was problematic because Boreham Wood was blessed with an unusually talented non-League goalkeeper in Tony Tilbrook. Tony was short by goalkeeper standards, and that must be the only reason he didn’t make it as a full-time pro (he’d been an apprentice at Spurs and Brentford). Watching him play was equal parts inspiring and depressing. He plucked crosses off the heads of burly strikers, held shots with almost dismissive ease and kicked nearly the length of the pitch. He was so good that in those first weeks, I often lay awake at night thinking about it.

My worry wasn’t that Tony was so good that I might not get a game; I worried because Tony was so good and still hadn’t made it as a pro. How could such a talented goalkeeper be consigned to play in front of 200 fans a game, for £30 a week? How was I supposed to make it, if he couldn’t?

The overall level of play was also distressing. Tony was a stand- out talent, whereas most of the outfield players were decidedly ordinary, if not downright awful, and games leaned heavily toward graft, industry and gleefully violent tackling. Throw in chilly weather, gray skies, muddy pitches and small but abusive crowds, and it’s easy to see why non-League football was such a culture shock.

But it was also a much-needed education. I learned from watching Tony, his aggressive but judicious positioning at set pieces. I learned from John Drabwell’s almost comically abu-sive halftime screeds. Most importantly, I learned in training that raising your level is a matter of effort. After getting jostled and flattened and ignored for a few weeks, it slowly started to make its own kind of sense to me. I learned to expect contact when coming for a cross, so I stopped flinching and started at-tacking the ball. I was so mortified by how poor my kicking was that I stayed late after training to take hundreds of goal kicks on an empty pitch. And I learned that there’s no better motiva-tion to make saves than to get people to notice you.

While things progressed on the pitch, they stagnated off it. Our shared language and culture notwithstanding, England is a foreign country, and I didn’t fit in particularly well. For one thing, I dressed like a footballer—a footballer perpetually about to begin a training session. This was a serious cultural misread on my part. My logic, I suppose, was that because football is popular in England, footballers must be popular. And indeed they are—the famous ones. But a no-name going everywhere in shiny ’80s tracksuits just looked silly, and looking silly con-signed me to being alone most of the time.

18 Americans Abroad

II Out of the ‘Lost Generation’

My all-football, all-the-time mentality meant I was completely unaware of some great things going on in England. I was just thirty minutes from central London and all of its cultural riches, but I went rarely, and most nights was home in bed by 10. So I missed concerts, dates, nightclubs, the sort of things in which most normal 22-year-olds have at least passing interest. I genuinely had none.

I come from a small family, and I suppose I took them for granted. That’s something else I hadn’t considered, eager as I was for my football adventure and flush with the bravado and independence of youth: I was going to a place where nobody loved me. That omnipresent familial love and support is the kind of thing you most notice when it’s gone, and it’s never more gone than when it’s an ocean away, especially in the days before email and Skype. I called home, collect, once a week, and wrote actual letters. I lived to check the mail, and when I got a letter in return, it made my week.

If you go abroad to play soccer, then ultimately your life will be as good as your soccer. After two months, my life improved. Tony Tilbrook and John Drabwell had a falling-out, and John dropped Tony. John told me this an hour before a home league game against Leatherhead. I had to rush home for my gloves and kit, and didn’t really have time to get nervous, until just be-fore kickoff. The nerves then hit like malaria, overpowering me with self-doubt. All those violent games I’d watched Tony effort-lessly manage—could I do that? Or was I about to be humiliated?

As violent and hypersonic as non-League football had seemed to me from the dugout, it felt like the same old thing once I was playing. Nobody tried to behead me or cut me in half. I came for a cross early in the game and took it cleanly. The small crowd cheered. Later, I made a genuinely good save from a free kick. By the second half, it seemed as if I’d always played at that level, and after we won 2-0, I felt like I belonged.

So, at that point, did everybody else. Teammates suddenly knew my name, looked me in the eye, spoke directly to me. It wasn’t that they’d been unfriendly before; they’d just treated me like a benign interloper. Now I was one of them, no longer a curiosity, no longer just a Yank. I was a footballer, and a half-decent one at that.

Not that it mattered. Tony and Drabs patched up their dif-ferences, and he was back in goal for the next game. But after a successful debut, I immediately set my sights higher. A scout who saw the Leatherhead game passed my name on to Brent-ford, a Division Three club, and a few days later the Brentford

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manager Steve Perryman, longtime captain of Spurs, called me at home and offered me a trial. He didn’t sound very enthusias-tic about it, in all honesty. Before I hung up, I said something like, “Thank you so much for the opportunity,” and he said,

“Uh huh, yeah.” Click.

Brentford was a big step up from Boreham Wood. Though only a third division side, the players were full-time pros. They were fitter, faster and better on the ball. They were younger, too; so young that during my first few days, I assumed I was training with the reserve team. There were a dozen other trial-ists along with me at the first session, but I was the only one asked back the next day. It quickly became clear why: Brentford had only one goalkeeper under contract.

I would love a chance to re-do the next four weeks.

Steve Perryman pulled me aside and said he’d like me to continue coming to training. He said they planned on giving me a serious look, although they weren’t sure what complications my national-ity might cause. So there I was, just a few months on from playing in big, open parks in front of zero fans in the Florida summer, being seriously considered for a professional contract in England. And what did I do?

I put my feet up, metaphorically speak-ing, and relaxed as if I already had it made. I showed up for training on time, and I did what I was told. But what I know now that I didn’t know then is that nobody but the most talented players in the world makes it like that. You make it by showing up early, staying late and training like a demon. I should have kicked and fought and screamed and made it impossible for them to not sign me. Instead, I subconsciously focused on not making waves, not drawing attention to myself, ingratiating myself socially with a few key players.

20 Americans Abroad

II Out of the ‘Lost Generation’

It “worked,” inasmuch as I got to know the other goalkeeper and everyone treated me like I belonged. This in turn allowed me to think that I did in fact belong, and that I’d made it. What it didn’t do is get me an actual contract. Perryman eventually told me he thought I was good, but not better than what they already had, and therefore not worth the work permit hassle. He invited me to continue training with them, and as that’s all I really expected anyway, I did.

I spent the following season back in the U.S., a better goal-keeper thanks to my experiences in England, and signed my first professional contract, albeit only a short-term one with the Orlando Lions. The year after that, season 1989/90, I wrote to a dozen clubs asking for trials, and hopped on a plane to Glasgow when Dunfermline Athletic responded positively.

Dunfermline was in what was then called the Scottish Pre-mier Division, the top flight, alongside Rangers, Celtic and Aberdeen. Something I had found at both Boreham Wood and Brentford proved to be true at Dunfermline as well: When you come for a trial, nobody cares who you are or where you have played. This was the case even though I had played against Dunfermline in a friendly for the Lions the previous season, and had essentially won the game by saving two penalties. A few Dunfermline players said, “Oh yeah, I remember you,” but in a tone which made it clear that they didn’t really remem-ber, or simply didn’t care.

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I soon understood that Dunfermline, like most British clubs at that time, didn’t actually need another goalkeeper. Veteran Ian Westwater was doing just fine, and young reserve John Hillcoat was talented and immensely promising. Once again, my ambition let me down, as I found I was happy to simply go to training every day. John “Hilly” Hillcoat and I developed a close (and lasting) friendship, Ian Westwater looked after both of us like a kindly older brother, and I got to play a friendly at East End Park against a Dutch team. That game was a big deal. I’d played there for the Lions in front of a big crowd, but it meant infinitely more to be playing for the home team. We won easily and I didn’t have much to do in the game. There was a picture in the local paper the next day, taken just after the final whistle, both teams lined up for the camera. I can see in my face what I was feeling: Thank God I didn’t fuck up.

One of the reasons Hilly and I bonded so quickly was that we had a common enemy. One of the reserve team players used to be at Rangers but hadn’t played much for them; despite this, he acted the big shot, especially around the younger players. But his career had stagnated, and he wasn’t getting a regular game or even making the subs’ bench at Dunfermline. Perhaps that’s why he was so cranky. He used to go out of his way to bitch and moan at Hilly and me in training games. If you were on his team, whatever you did was wrong. He always wanted the ball thrown to him, he always thought you should save everything, he always shouted his opinion when you didn’t. It wasn’t just bitching; his rants were abusive and sometimes personal. The senior pros laughed him off, and he never dared shout at Ian Westwater. But Hilly and I were fair game. Once, after a train-ing session where he’d demanded to know just what the fuck I thought I was doing, he tried to make friendly small talk with me around the snooker table. I could tell he was trying to make amends for being a colossal prick, and I tried to make it easy for him, but his heart wasn’t in it and neither was mine. We mum-bled a few pleasantries, and he was right back to screaming at me the next day.

Despite that unwanted attention, by the strange standards I’d set for myself, I had made it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a con-tract and wasn’t making any money. After a few months, Dun-fermline manager Jim Leishman told me he thought I was good, good enough to play in the top flight, even. But as a non-UK for-eigner with no national team caps, I had no chance of getting a work permit. He invited me to continue training and offered to help me find a more suitable club. I stayed just as long as I could stand the fierce winter, then flew back to Florida.

22 Americans Abroad

II Out of the ‘Lost Generation’

The Lions by now were no more, so I spent the summer of 1990 playing in the Florida State League, willfully ignoring mounting evidence that my career was dying a listless, plodding death. The Florida State League was embarrassing. We drove hundreds of miles to play pointless games before zero fans in blistering heat. A few months of that was all it took to send me scurrying back to Boreham Wood.

This time around, almost everything was different. I was only 24, but was no longer chasing stardom and big money. I just wanted to play well in a football-rich environment. Tony Tilbrook and most of the oth-ers from a few seasons before were long gone, and I played regularly. Quite a few of the team were only 19 or 20, and I found myself in the unexpected position of veteran. The youth team goalkeeper, a 16-year-old named Graeme, began asking for advice in training. I played in the wind and rain and mud and even snow, and did it smiling. I hooked up with highly respected goalkeeper coach Alex Welsh and got to train with him and Spurs keeper Tony Parks. Along with the rest of the Boreham Wood squad, I shot a commercial for Hi-Tec boots. I even made a few friends off the pitch, unrelated to football, and learned to dress like a normal person.

There was even money. Bore-ham Wood paid me in cash, every Friday, in a little brown envelope. My pay was exactly half my weekly rent; the other half came from lit-tle odd jobs I did around the club, such as painting the stadium roof, a task interrupted by rain for five straight days, or bartending pri-vate parties. I occasionally picked the weeds out of the crumbling terraces that ran along three sides of the pitch, a job I enjoyed because I had the little stadium to myself and could listen to my Walkman as I worked. Often, because I needed the money, I would just break the weeds off at the base rather than uproot them, so they would grow back and I could do it again (“These weeds are out of control!” the club secretary once moaned to me. “Must be all the rain,” I told him.).

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I had occasional windfalls, such as the Hi-Tec commercial, and the time a Boreham Wood fan who happened to be a TV di-rector invited me to be an extra for a day on the show “Minder,” which ended up paying an entire month’s rent. I didn’t have much pocket money, but as long as my rent was paid, I was happy.

Not that it was all sunshine and baby turtles. This is where the yelling comes in. We had a player-manager named Harry Meikle who encouraged, supported and believed in me. He really did. It just so happened that he tended to express this in screaming tirades during games. If I failed to come for a cross he believed was mine, he spent the next three minutes yelling at me. That’s a long time to yell at one person during a match, and I remember more than once getting bemused looks from opponents not quite believing what they were seeing.

He couldn’t have been lovelier away from games, always ask-ing after me and making sure I was doing okay. But he wanted to win so badly that he turned into something unrecognizable and fearsome during games. His method worked, though. I began to anticipate his tirades and learned how to head them off and stay one step ahead. He taught me that responsible goalkeepers don’t just stand on their line and make saves. That wasn’t enough for Harry. Good goalkeepers constantly direct their back four, make themselves available for back passes, sweep up balls outside the box. I wouldn’t have learned it all without the yelling.

I wouldn’t say I learned much from being yelled at by fans. The problem with non-League fans is that there aren’t many of them, and they stand very close to the goals, so you can hear every bit of abuse. It was occasionally good-natured and funny, but frequently abusive and tinged with real fury.

“Someone should fucking stab you,” a fan once hissed at me. All I’d done was linger a bit too long before taking a goal kick. I never feared for my safety, exactly, but there were a few times when it seemed like a very good idea to get straight off the pitch at the final whistle.

“Someone should fucking stab you,” a fan once hissed at me.

24 Americans Abroad

II Out of the ‘Lost Generation’

It was rare for anyone around town to recognize me. I didn’t like it the few times it happened; I found it embarrassing to be treated like a big shot while playing at the non-League level. I had also learned by then that it wasn’t always good to be recognized. When I was at Dunfermline, the local paper ran a little story, with a picture, about me and two other players on trial. That week, I got stopped in the street a few times by peo-ple wishing me luck, but also by a feral band of 16-year-old street kids, one of whom said with a sneer, “You think you’re special?” They tried to back me into a corner but I stepped into a shop and they left. John Hill-coat told me the same bunch had harassed him a few times.

After playing my last game of the 90/91 season, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. It was time to move on from playing for loose change. The Boreham Wood players surprised me with an engraved cup, thank-ing me for my service as a teammate. It was an astonishingly touching gesture from a group of guys who prided themselves on banter and sarcasm. I would like to say it has a special place on my desk today, but I misplaced it somewhere along the way. Yet that’s okay–it seems appropriate that I don’t have anything tangible to show for all of my adventures abroad. All that really matters is what I learned.

All photos courtesy of the author

1 Orlando Lions, lined up at Pittodrie prior to a match with Aberdeen, 1988. Bryant is in the blue shirt.

2 With John Hillcoat (left) at Dunfermline Athletic, 1989.

3 After a reserve team game at St Mirren, 1989.

4 Bryant (far right) after a friendly against a Dutch team at Dunfermline, 1990.

5 Bryant, Shell Brodsgaard, and Kevin Wasden training at Dunfermline, 1990.

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