That Boy Clint Dempsey vs. The World?

By Saf Hossain, writing hours after returning from Craven Cottage

Attending a live match is, obviously, an entirely different experience to watching on TV. When you are free of the director’s control, you might choose to follow an individual on the field for long periods of the game. This happened as I was sitting in the Putney End of Craven Cottage as Fulham took on Juventus in the Europa League. Seventy-one minutes had elapsed, and the sign went up to signal that Clint Dempsey was coming on. I tracked everything Dempsey did after entering the game for ten minutes. Ten minutes later he floated the winning goal over the ‘keeper’s head, slaying a giant of the European game. Since then, I’ve been singing Deuce’s praises to any football fan who will listen.

Only now are the British football audience truly waking up to Dempsey’s quality. It isn’t a surprise that they are finally doing so, since the Texan today completed a brace of hat-tricks in January. Moreover, Dempsey has become the all-time American top-scorer in the Premier League and Fulham’s record scorer in the top flight of English football. Impressive titles, and the notion that a larger, richer, possibly Champions League-playing suitor will come in for the attacker seems an eventuality. How do (all due respect) smaller clubs’ fans rationalise one of their superstars moving on? Even as the most casual of Fulham followers (I support Liverpool, go figure) I’ve romanticised that Dempsey would stay loyal to the little club on the banks of the Thames. However, from what I know of soccer in the US, it certainly sounds like Dempsey has earned his place in the limelight.

Unlike in England, players in the US do not normally burst onto the scene as teenagers – at least they don’t aside from Freddy Adu (and who wants to bring that up again?). Clint Dempsey’s own story was that his parents would drive him six hours each day from Nacogdoches to Dallas to play in a youth team. Dempsey subsequently came through the college system and spent two years playing Major League Soccer before becoming a Fulham player. As the American approaches his 29^th birthday, there is a strong case that a player of his ability should be playing for greater honours than keeping Fulham afloat.

If there is a big club in Europe that lacks a sharpness up front, Dempsey fits that bill. Match-winning talent is need at Arsenal and it is (desperately) needed at Liverpool. As a fan each time I examine my team’s starting lineup, I am certain that it would be greatly enhanced with a player like Fulham’s number 23. Even from the bench a potential match-winner in the form of Dempsey would instil a quiet confidence to any supporter that no amount of hardworking Dutchmen could. Did I insinuate that he doesn’t work hard? Take it from Deuce’s own mouth: “I was born with the drive, I got that from no coaches.”