The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them (12 page)

L
aura arrived a few weeks later, on a drizzly morning. Manchester is a gloomy town—almost always gray and rainy. But Laura is all bright colors, all sparkle. When she emerged from customs, it was like she’d brought all the sunshine of Memphis, all the warmth of home with her.

“I’m here!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I’m finally here!”

We collected her bags, dragged them out to the new Mercedes—“Verrrry nice,” she said approvingly.

Before I turned on the engine, I looked at Laura.

My wife.

It was a strange moment for me. I’d been so caught up in the excitement of the last couple of months—it had all been heady and frenetic. Falling in love, and traveling between Memphis and New Jersey, meeting each other’s families, getting engaged, planning the huge wedding that never happened. Our whirlwind trip here to sign with Manchester United. Back to the States for the tiny impromptu wedding that happened instead. The series of exhibitions I had played for my new team as Laura took apart her old life in Memphis, to be reassembled now with me.

She’d said so many times,
I can’t wait. I can’t wait to get there.

I can’t wait to start living with you.

Now she was here. Our life together—whatever it looked like—was about to begin. We were about to drive to our new house, the near-mansion that she and I had selected just a few weeks ago. (Was it just a few weeks ago? Already it felt like forever)

Sitting there with her in that car, my hand on the ignition, I realized I had no idea how to do this thing I was about to do—perform my job to the best of my abilities and live with a wife in this dark, damp country.

I took a deep breath, and started the engine. The wipers made steady sloshing noises as we drove through the rain. I felt my face twitch a little as I stared straight ahead.

I’m going to have to figure this out
, I thought.

W
e lived about a block from Wilmslow’s Grove Street, a pedestrian shopping plaza. It was a neighborhood of “footballers.” As we strolled over to Grove Street, we passed Bentleys and Aston Martins, a sure sign that soccer players were about. At the end of the shopping plaza sat a Starbucks. There, I might spot some of my teammates or guys from the other big clubs in the area.

Walking home, Laura would offer her views on whomever we’d seen. Her opinions rarely had anything to do with their game: it was all about how much they’d been caught up in the weird egocentric world around us.

She liked Cristiano Ronaldo, for example—liked how boyish and friendly he was. Cristiano had come to England with his mother, a sturdy, thickly accented Portuguese woman who looked like she’d just left the island of Madeira. Within a year, his mom would be decked out in Prada sunglasses and $2,000 handbags. But Cristiano would never stop doting on his mom, something that always impressed Laura.

She adored Paul Scholes, because he’d quit the national team to spend more time with his kids. Laura appreciated family guys who hadn’t let the money go to their heads.

But others, like Roy Keane, she couldn’t bear. “Ugh,” she said. “I can’t stand that guy. He walks around like he thinks he’s bigger than God.”

I laughed. Laura was American, through and through—and she had no patience for the huge egos that dominated English soccer.

I happened to like Roy. Sure, he was quick to rage, loose with profanity, and often itching for a fight, sometimes even with his own teammates.

And granted, he could be arrogant. But he had every right to be. He was the captain of Manchester United and he had led them to countless trophies; he actually was every bit as good as he believed he was. Besides, he had that quality I’d always appreciated in people: you knew where you stood with the man. He gave it to you straight, even if “straight” meant his words were shouted, and came strung together with F-bombs.

I
naively thought that I could maintain some sense of a private life in England. Once I arrived in Manchester, I’d given an interview to the
New York Times
. When the reporter asked me about Laura, I’d said, “That’s private.”

Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

It’s hard to express the degree of fanaticism within the Premier League. There’s nothing quite like it in the United States. In the U.S., we’ve got our share of superfans, men and women who live and die by their team’s fortunes.

But in the States, loyalties are divided across sports. We’ve got the NBA. The NFL. National Hockey League. Major League Baseball. We’ve got NASCAR and, yes, Major League Soccer, too. We’ve got college sports—March Madness and the BCS.

Now imagine if the most rabid fans from each of these different sports coalesced around a single team within a single sport. Imagine that their dedication runs deep, through multiple generations over a century. Imagine that reports about their sport are broadcast around the clock—in every pub, every restaurant, every hotel lobby in the country.

Now imagine being a player in their midst.

Most of the time, it’s incredible. I love the passion, the commitment. It’s a joy to see perfectly ordinary people leap out of their seat in a state of pure ecstasy. I don’t even mind hearing the expletives pour out of their mouths toward the players on the field.

But once in a while, I come across someone who takes it too far. One night, for example, Laura and I were at a pub with a friend when a man stumbled up to our table. “Tim Howard,” the guy bellowed, “you don’t know shit about goalkeeping.”

Suddenly, the din of the voices around us grew quiet. The man’s face was flushed and his words slurred, probably from a few too many pints. Other than that, he looked like a normal guy in his forties—probably somebody’s husband, somebody’s dad, a midlevel employee of some company.

I felt my heart beating faster, felt that rush of adrenaline through my body. The same thing happened to me before each game; it was what allowed me to stay alert, to sense danger on that field, to stop the ball reflexively, without thinking. But there was no ball to be stopped here, only some red-nosed jerk with a paunch telling me how to do my job.

Laura looked right at me, as if silently saying,
Keep your cool, keep your cool.

“You know I pay your wages, right?” He continued: “I’ve got a season ticket, so I’m the one who’s paying you.”

As his friends dragged him from our table, I could still hear his voice: “You’re a wanker, Tim Howard. And don’t you forget who pays your salary.”

Our guest’s jaw hung open. He gave a little shake of his head, as if to trying to dislodge the unpleasant encounter he had witnessed.

“So,” he said. “This happen a lot?”

I shrugged. I could feel my heart pounding. “Sometimes,” I said. What I wanted to do was get up, find this guy, grab him by his shirt collar. I wanted to remind him that his season ticket entitled him to one thing only: to attend the game, to scream and cheer virtually anything that wasn’t racist or homophobic. And then to go home.

It sure as hell didn’t give him the right to interrupt dinner with my wife and friend.

L
aura and I did our best to try to acclimate to life in Manchester. Our first order of business was to get a dog.

Clayton was a goofy puppy who flopped all over the house, always getting in trouble. He needed to be in constant motion or
he’d start chewing the furniture or scratching at the doors. He reminded me of myself and my brother, running roughshod all over Mom’s apartment back in New Jersey.

“He’s going to destroy this house!” I’d exclaim. Then I’d try to scold him, and Laura would swoop him up. She’d pet behind his ears and say, “Aw, but he’s just learning. And he’s such a good boy.

“Aren’t you a good boy, Clayton?” Then that dog would go bounding around the house all over again.

Clayton took forever to housebreak; we’d come in from the grocery store, only to find piles and puddles staining the hardwood floors of our beautiful Manchester United home.

We’d stand in the doorway, temporarily paralyzed by the constant havoc of this furry little creature.

Then Laura would go into action mode. “You get the paper towels,” she would say. “I’ll get the plastic bag.”

I
was playing well. In my first nine games, I posted six clean sheets, and had allowed only three goals. By January, I’d started in 29 matches, posting a 22–5–2 record, with 14 shutouts.

The tabloids turned around their screaming headlines pretty quickly.

The bestselling
Sun
noted, THIS YANK’S NO PLANK
.

The
Express
agreed: YANKEE DOING DANDY
.

And the more sober-minded broadsheets chimed in as well. “If the American goalkeeper has a weakness,” the
Telegraph
observed, “there has not been a team who have located it.”

Before long, the home crowd had even made up a chant for me. Sometimes when I stopped a shot, I’d hear the Man U supporters singing to the tune of “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from
Mary Poppins
:

It was a play on my TS, of course. And while it wasn’t remotely accurate, I could live with it. It beat being called “retarded” and “disabled,” anyway.

A
gain and again, I was compared to Peter Schmeichel, the “Great Dane,” former United keeper widely considered to be among the top ten in history. In a Reuters poll more than 200,000 fans had ranked him the best goalie of all time.

During one interview, Tony Coton said he believed that I could even surpass Schmeichel. Halfway through my first season, Schmeichel himself said that I could be “a United legend.”

It was flattering, but every time I heard someone spout this kind of hyperbole, I wanted to say,
Wait. Please wait.

I’d spent my entire life comparing myself to others. I knew exactly how I stacked up against Schmeichel. I had talent, I had drive, and I had a heck of a lot of potential. But I wasn’t in Schmeichel’s class. Not by a long shot.

I knew something else, too. As hard as I was working, and as lucky as I’d gotten, it was just a matter of time before I made a mistake. A big one.

S
ix weeks after the Community Shield, we met Arsenal again in a match that would go down in soccer folklore . . . and not for its outstanding play. Still scoreless in the 80th minute, the game turned ugly when Ruud van Nistelrooy and Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira both went after a high ball, and Ruud jumped on top of Vieira, knocking them both to the ground. Vieira kicked out at Ruud—a deliberate, nasty cheap shot. Already on a yellow card, Vieira was given a second one for the foul on van Nistelrooy, which resulted in automatic ejection.

When the game ended, the Arsenal players surrounded Ruud. Martin Keown, who had a history of bad blood with the striker, got right up in Ruud’s face, bringing his arm down hard on the back of his neck—he clocked the guy. Ray Parlour, Ashley Cole, and a few other Arsenal players joined in, jostling and taunting Ruud for missing a penalty kick in stoppage time. Roy Keane tried to pull Ruud out of there. As he did, three more United players, Cristiano Ronaldo, Quinton Fortune, and Mikaël Silvestre, entered the fracas, ready to defend their besieged teammate.

From the end of the field, I watched it escalate, swelling to a
bench-clearing 25-man melee. Here were some of the world’s top pros pushing and shoving as if they were in the schoolyard.

What is happening?

It was adrenaline, of course—the same chemical that kick-started my rage when the middle-aged drunk approached me in the restaurant—and I’d soon come to learn how much it could dominate players’ lives, both on and off the field.

Arsenal’s win that day was just the beginning of an incredible run that would see them go through the season unbeaten and earn them the moniker “the Invincibles.” But by the time we played them again, I would no longer be on the field.

T
he winters come quickly in Manchester and last for a long, long time. By early September, the average daytime temperature is in the 50s, often dipping to near-freezing at night. Manchester sits on the 53rd North parallel—as far north as many parts of Alaska. It’s dark by 3
P.M
., and shops are shuttered by 5
P.M
. The color of the sky ranges from slate gray to ink black.

And then there’s the rain, thin and persistent. The dampness seeps into your bones. Not long ago, a Manchester resident tracked the weather for an entire year, taking meticulous notes, and found that rainy days outnumbered dry ones by 198 to 167.

That winter, taking Clayton out for walks with Laura became the best part of my day. Each afternoon, we strolled over to Carrs Park, a mix of woods and meadow along the Bollin River where Clayton would romp with his canine playmates, splash along the riverbanks, and pee on every available tree. At night, exhausted, we’d all curl up, close our eyes, and sleep.

I loved that dog. I loved that he didn’t know anything about goals or games, about hot-headed managers or boastful
teammates. I loved that he wasn’t impressed when he heard passersby whisper
Tim Howard . . . Manchester United . . . yeah, that’s him
.

Most of all, I loved the way Laura looked at Clayton, how her eyes went soft just because he thumped his tail on the floor. And when I checked out—because of anxiety before a game or disappointment after one, or when I was too spent from a tough training session to utter a word—Clayton would step in wagging his tail and make Laura laugh. Even when I couldn’t.

I
often lingered after practice. Just as I had enlisted Tab to fire balls at me back in our MetroStars days, now I asked Ruud van Nistelrooy to open up a can of thunder. Ruud was happy to oblige, sending balls in with swerve and dip at speeds up to 90 mph. But no matter how long we stayed out there, we were never the last to leave the field. That’s because no one could outwork Cristiano Ronaldo.