DAVID GREENE, HOST: Alan, I feel like if people have been enjoying soccer here in the United States recently, they should really be sending you a thank you note.

ALAN ROTHENBERG: (Laughs) Thank you. I’ve been getting many. Thank you

DG: You have been? What’s your favorite one so far?

AR: Oh my God, I can’t even pick out one, but people stop me and give me “Thank you for what you’ve done.”

DG: That’s wonderful. Well, for our listeners who don’t realize what you have done, I’m speaking to Alan Rothenberg. He’s the author of a new book out this year, “The Big Bounce, The Surge That Shaped the Future of U.S. Soccer.” But more importantly, even more importantly he played just an incredibly instrumental role in getting the World Cup to the United States in 1994, which led to the growth of soccer, and led to Major League Soccer in the United States. And I think Alan, probably fair to say, helped us get to the World Cup being in the United States this year.

AR: Absolutely. First of all, our success in ’94 from a commercial standpoint was so over the top that FIFA just fell in love with us. As Don Garber recently said, “We are the ATM for international soccer now.” Anyway, FIFA couldn’t wait to come back here because obviously, we are such a huge, important nation. But more importantly, from a commercial standpoint, we’re so rich, we have so much sponsorship. We have these amazing facilities, the stadiums and the like that you know, I think if FIFA can bring us back every four years, they probably would make this the permanent home, but obviously they do have to move it around the world.

DG: Are we okay with that? That one of the big reasons that FIFA has incentivized to, you know, host the World Cup and be involved with the United States, is purely financial.

AR: Look at what the impact of 1994 was, as you mentioned, David, can’t be ignored. It really set the stage for everything that’s happened ever since. And this World Cup is going to take us to yet another level. When you see the viewing audiences, our attendance record has already been broken. Of course, that was easy because they had twice as many games.

DG: Right. (Laughs)

AR: But TV ratings, I just saw that the Belgian-U.S. rating was higher than the seventh game of the World Series and the seventh game of the NBA Finals.

DG: Wow. In the United States?

AR: Yes, and so you’ve got all those viewers seeing that. All the street scenes and the stadiums, all the excitement is just continuing to accelerate the interest and the growth in the sport. So I’m looking for bigger and better.

DG: It’s interesting because I think the disappointment from that U.S.-Belgium match and the U S going out, you know, earlier than some were hoping for, especially after the amazing, you know, performance in the group stage. It sounds like you don’t think that crushing defeat stopped the momentum in the long run in terms of the sport growing, fair to say?

AR: It didn’t stop it for sure. I mean, it was a disappointment because if we had kept going, those TV ratings that I mentioned would be continuing to grow. But let’s be realistic. We got overly enthusiastic about our early results in the group stage. It was never realistic to think that, you know, we would move that much further along. When we started the tournament, I think most everybody would say, if we make it through the round of 32, it’s going to be successful. And after that, of course, we have no idea who we’re going to play or what’s going to happen. So we got our hopes a little bit unrealistically high. And I want to make sure that our disappointment isn’t also unrealistically low. The fact of the matter is, it was very positive. We showed that we have a lot of talented players who, when the conditions are right for them, can play really outstanding soccer. And the growth is just gonna continue to be dynamic. And I think, as they say, let’s all be realistic. We couldn’t become a serious contender overnight. It’s gonna still take more time. I’m not saying how many years it’s gonna be, but inevitably, you’re younger than me, you’re gonna see the U.S. as a serious, serious World Cup contender. I may not be there, but you will be.

DG: I hope we’re both there.

AR: Me too. (Laughs)

DG: I guess like it goes beyond just obviously the performance of the U.S. men’s national team. Of course, we have the US women’s national team, which is super exciting and has seen more success than the men, but it’s also a cultural thing, right? Like, I have become a fan of LAFC in MLS over the last four or five years, like I would say I was never a soccer fan seven or eight years ago, and now I am, and I guess I wonder, like, when you talk about incremental growth in the sport in the United States in the coming years, what are you looking for?

AR: Well, let’s talk about the development of the men’s national team, because I think that’s the missing link in so many ways. Major League Soccer has been very, very successful, and its success, I think, is going to lead forward following ’96. As you mentioned, the women, and by the way, they owe a lot to the ’94 World Cup because we wouldn’t have had the ’99 Women’s World Cup the way we did it but for ’94. Because FIFA originally said we could host ’99, but it had to be in small stadiums in the Northeast. And after the success of ’94 and after the women’s success in the Olympics in ’96, we were finally able to convince FIFA to let us play the ’99 Women’s World Cup in the big stadiums throughout the country. And that was really the breakthrough, not just for women’s soccer, but for women’s sports of all kinds. So, everything sort of still traces back to where we were. So as I say, the women, partially because of Title IX and partially because a lot of the then soccer nations in the early 90s, still, because of their culture, did not accept women’s sport. The women started off right off the bat at ’91, winning the first women’s World Cup. The men obviously have close to a century to catch up. And also, the problem is around the world, virtually everywhere, the only sport is soccer. So if you’re a young athlete, that’s the only thing you’re paying attention to. Obviously, in the United States, if you are a young athlete, super talented, you got baseball, basketball, football, if you know how to skate, hockey, as well as soccer. And so the more attention that’s paid to soccer, the more likelihood it is that some of these super-talented youngsters are gonna gravitate to soccer instead of some of the other sports. And also we have to be pretty aggressive in the use of the U.S. soccer’s new training center outside of Atlanta. It’s state-of-the-art. It’s as good as any national training center in the world. And I think if we can emulate what France did to build their program and we’re going to have a lot of success because basically it brings together all these disparate teams and players into one location. Even right up to the top pros, whether it’s the offseason, that’s where, that’s sort of their second home. And so greater development, greater team spirit and team cohesiveness, and development of a unique American style, so the challenge, as I said, is to bring the men’s team up from where it is now, which is good, but not yet great, to greatness.

DG: Did you get to go to any matches during this World Cup?

AR: I went to the opening, and I was all poised to go today, but made other plans.

DG: Alan, you mentioned, you know, like half jokingly, FIFA seeing the United States, like as an ATM. I think about Rahm Emanuel, for example, in Chicago, when he was mayor, saying, “I don’t want the World Cup in Chicago because I don’t want our taxpayers to be the dumb money at the table.” You know, FIFA is always in the headlines, you know, seen as a corrupt organization. Like people who have sort of a bad taste in their mouths, what do you say to them to give them permission to still love this sport?

AR: Well, to love the sport and ignore FIFA.

DG: (Laughs)

AR: You know, there’s a lot of noise before a World Cup, as there is before an Olympics, and it’s really the participants are selected six months or more before the event, and so you have this huge gap. Now, in most cases, what the media is focused on is infrastructure issues because everybody’s scrambling to build new stadiums or to finish new stadiums or airports or hotels and the like. In this case, since our infrastructure in North America is so good and was so good, that couldn’t be a topic. And FIFA, I think, whether what they did was right or wrong, in my opinion, from a PR standpoint, it was mishandled. And if I were running the show, at the same time as they disclosed the ticket pricing, and they had a problem because in the United States we’re accustomed the dynamic pricing. Around the world or not. And so I don’t think domestically, people were as excited and upset about the initial announcement of pricing because the way dynamic pricing works at the end of the day, it’s going to be whatever the market is. It could go up or down depending on the demand. But around the world, it was a shock. They were requiring everybody to have a Fan Festival and to have official watch parties. If it was me, I would have highlighted that at the very same time as I announced the ticket pricing and be candid about the fact that, first of all, regardless of price, there’s only so many tickets available in the stadium. So there’s gonna be people shut out, even people who could afford to buy tickets. And obviously, for some fans, some of those ticket prices were pretty expensive. I would’ve emphasized the fact that we’re having Fan Festivals and watch parties throughout every city. They’re available at little or no cost, depending on what the deal was, and really make it feel like they understood the everyman’s reaction to it. The reality is that, again, it’s been proven correct in the sense that they’ve sold out the stadiums, basically, and so whatever you want to say about the ticket pricing, somehow people were able to scramble and get pricing. And again, another example of dynamic ticket pricing is the game today. There are now tickets available. They weren’t there if it was the U.S. But the price of the tickets has dramatically dropped since A, the U.S. was out. And since, even since they started with the beginning of Spain and Belgium, and so that initial shock price is now in a fraction of that. But yeah, that dynamic ticket pricing, which is going to become commonplace around the world. I don’t think it will be the next World Cup, it won’t be such a shock.

DG: Let me ask you just a kind of broad question about soccer. I mean, in the United States, as you said, we have more choices as sports consumers. It’s the middle of baseball season. Things are about to, we’re gonna get in the playoff race. We’ve got football season right around the corner. I mean, I always think about August as training camp time and getting ready for the NFL. Like, for people who have spent these last few weeks getting soccer curious and being like, huh, I thought this sport was really boring. But now I’m kind of getting into it. Like, what’s the best argument for why soccer is special?

AR: Well, first of all, when you talk about the accusation that is boring, this World Cup proves…

DG: Anything but. Yeah.

AR: Again, that’s old school. I think when we were starting in the 90s, again, the media were old timers and they didn’t get the special nature of a 0-0 or a 1-0 game. So they thought because of score, it’s boring. Obviously, now we have a generation of people who have grown up with the sport, and they understand that, in some ways, the low scoring is what makes it even more special.

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AR: Because for 90 minutes in a great match, you’ve got your heart in your mouth. One great play or one screw-up…

DG: Can change everything.

AR: is life or death. So you’re riveted.

DG: Alan Rothenberg, he is the author of “The Big Bounce, The Surge That Shaped the Future of U.S. Soccer.” Thank you so much for talking to us.

AR: It’s been my pleasure and it’s been my pleasure watching this World Cup and I’m excited about the final.

DG: Yeah, really, really appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of this Cup. It’s been incredible. And thank you as a fan for all you’ve done to get us to this moment.

AR: Well, you’re more than welcome, and I thank you for being so involved.

DG: Coming up, Landon Donovan.

MIDROLL

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BROADCASTER: Two minutes left now, the Algerians have a chance to press here. You can see their supporters just on the far side of the field there. Gathering their enthusiasm as the United States have to stand and watch at home.

DG: It is June 23rd, 2010, and inside a stadium in South Africa, the deafening vuvuzelas are droning like a giant buzzsaw to signal the U.S. Men’s national team’s inevitable elimination from the World Cup. It’s the final match of the group stage, U.S. versus Algeria. Win, and they’re through to the knockout rounds. Draw or lose, and they go home. At the 92-minute mark in extra time, they’re still tied 0-0. They’re literally seconds away from the crushing end to a four-year dream, relegated to a punchline at a cocktail party.

LD: I’m not saying it’s a miracle, but miraculous things can happen and moments change people’s lives forever.

DG: What happens next unfolds in the blink of an eye. The American forwards are in an all-out sprint. Jozy Altidore nudges a square pass into the penalty area. Clint Dempsey blasts a shot right off the diving Algerian keeper, but the ball ricochets to Landon Donovan, who doesn’t hesitate and fires a no-doubter into the back of the net to win the game for the United States.

BROADCASTER: Best chance we’ve seen for an awful lot time, and now they’re stretched from the back. The U.S. has members Altidore squares it, Dempsey’s missed it, Donovan has it! From hope there is glory! And the United States are going through! It’s London Donovan who has given the U.S. the most dramatic…

LD: For me, it was a redemption, for sure. If you had just turned on the game for the first time, you would never know that. But for me, there was a lot that went into that to making that moment happen.

DG: It is one of the defining moments for American soccer, a goal that didn’t just win a match; it changed how millions thought about the sport and about what was possible for the U.S. Men’s national team. But for Landon Donovan, that goal is just one moment in a life that has rarely followed a straight line. He was a prodigy from Southern California, identified as one of the country’s brightest soccer talents before he was old enough to drive. He left home as a teenager to play for a German club, only to discover that extraordinary talent couldn’t protect him from loneliness or homesickness. Back in the U.S., he became the face of American soccer, becoming Major League Soccer’s biggest star, winning MLS Cups, and retiring as the US Men’s National Team’s all-time leader in goals and assists. But his public career was only part of the story as Landon lays out in his powerful new memoir.

LD: I was very angry as a young kid. I got in trouble at school a lot. I had a lot of anger. And I didn’t know until later in life that the impetus was this lack of relationship with my dad.

DG: For years, he wrestled with depression, burnout, and the expectations that came with carrying a sport on his shoulders. His decision to step away from the game at the height of his career challenged long-held ideas about toughness and mental health in professional sports. And beneath so much of it was something deeply personal, a complicated relationship with the father who wasn’t part of his childhood, and a decades-long journey towards understanding. Today on Sports in America, our conversation with Landon Donovan, which we had a few months before this year’s World Cup kicked off. We start on that noisy night in June 2010. Electric goal permanently changed the trajectory of the sport in this country.

Maybe the most iconic moment that we all remember you for among so many was that goal against Algeria in the World Cup in 2010. I mean, can you take us to that moment, sort of set it up, remind us what the stakes were for you guys? And then relive it.

LD: So I wanna, I think it’s important because we’re talking about it in the context of my life. It’s important for people to understand what happened prior. And so in 2006, I had a really bad World Cup in Germany. And between 2006 and 2010, after the really bad World Cup in Germany, I was very depressed for a couple of weeks because it was the first time I had been criticized, and I played really, really poorly. And so I had this moment through therapy and through self-awareness of telling myself I was never going to play that way again. I was hesitant. I was unable to play the way I wanted to play for a variety of reasons, and I told myself I’m never gonna do that again I don’t want to do that again. I had also, in that time frame, gone through a divorce that was very painful for me. I went through a period where I call it I shed my ego for the first time, which is a very, very painful thing to do when you have the ego that I had. And so I’d gone through a lot of stuff to get to this moment. So that this moment, if people are sports fans. We tied our first game, tied our second game, had to win our third game against Algeria to advance in the World Cup. And I scored a goal in the 92nd minute. So, a couple minutes into added time to get us through. And it became a very iconic moment in U.S. Men’s national team history. And it was a moment that changed my life forever. It’s part of the reason why I’m sitting here. But it’s important to have the context of what had happened previously and the buildup to all that. So for me, it was a redemption for sure. If you had just turned on the game for the first time, you would never know that. But for me, there was a lot that went into that to making that moment happen. And it’s the beauty of sports. It’s why I love sports. You never know what’s going to happen. I’m not saying it’s a miracle, but miraculous things can happen, and moments change people’s lives forever and impact people. I’m a sports fan. So watching Kirk Gibson hit a home run for the Dodgers in the World Series on one leg. There are countless moments where you’re just so proud to be a sports fan, and you love it. And I’m glad that I was able to help provide that too for others.

DG: How did that one singular moment change your entire life?

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LD: Because so you have to remember with soccer, right? Obviously, you’re an NFL fan with that Terrible Towel…

DG: I’m a soccer fan too. There’s an LAFC scarf behind me. I hope that’s not for a former Galaxy star…

LD: That’s a little offensive (Laughs)

DG: (Laughs) I hope that it’s okay.

LD: It’s okay. Nobody’s perfect. Yeah, sports are really special in that they impact the people on the field, of course, but they impact people for years and years and years after that. And the reason I say that, and the reason to answer your question is, this was pre-social media, so this was 2010. We were on the literally almost as far away as you could get from America in South Africa. And so we didn’t realize in the moment what it meant back home. And I’m not saying it was the biggest sports moment ever, but for most people who were sports fans in our country, it was the middle of the baseball season, but there was really nothing else going on, right? It’s the middle of summer, and people are like, okay, let’s watch soccer. For Americans, every four years, we have the opportunity to grow the sport exponentially, and one moment like that is the equivalent of like 10 years of Major League Soccer slow growth or a few national team games here or there that people might tune into. The World Cup gives you the opportunity to grow the sport exponentially, and what I didn’t realize in the moment, because really I was doing my job, I was on the field trying to score a goal to get us through, is how many people that impacted. David, almost every time I do an appearance or an event or I’m out in public, someone will come up to me and say, that goal either made me a soccer fan, that goal was the greatest sporting moment of my life, and or I was with this person, my grandpa before he died, my mom and I hugged for the first time in three years. Some story like that— gives me goosebumps. Some story that comes up every time I’m out doing something. And so you realize not only did it impact my life forever, but it impacted other lives forever. And I think that’s why people resonate with sports, because there’s this deep connection that you don’t get in anything else in life.

DG: It’s incredible that one moment can do that. Like we interviewed Larry Fitzgerald, and he was on the show recently, and you know, of course, as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, that Super Bowl that the Arizona Cardinals lost to the Steelers, he really still struggles today. Like I feel like I’m one of the greatest wide receivers in the history of the sport. Like I love all the success that the sport got me, but like one moment, one toe tap by a Steelers wide receiver by like a cent, like a millimeter made him never a champion.

LD: It’s incredible, isn’t it?

DG: I guess, I mean, sports cut both ways. Like it, you know, had you not scored that goal like what might that have meant?

LD: Well, that’s the margins, right? So like a toe tap and on that play if people haven’t seen it, you can YouTube it and watch it there’s a lot that happens in front of the goal and the ball just slowly rolls out to me and, you know, whatever reason I happen to be following the play but that ball could have gone anywhere anything could have happened, and this would be a different conversation today. And that’s what sports does and that’s why people love it because it’s unpredictable too.

DG: It is wild how the random bounce of a ball can capture and sustain a generation’s attention. Before this year’s World Cup, we wondered if Landon thought it might happen again.

As you reflect on how, as you were saying, one moment like that can do more for a sport or for soccer in the United States than like years of effort to market and increase access to young kids and all that stuff. How does that affect your thinking around, you know, 2026 right now? Like, are we in a place where one moment in 2026 could alter the trajectory of men’s soccer, the men’s national team, and the sport in our country? Or is that going too far?

LD: No, it’s not going at all, it’s not going too far. So there are two things I think that can exponentially accelerate the growth this summer. And I’ll start with in 2002, I played in my first World Cup in South Korea. And we got out of our group. We played Mexico in the round of 16, beat Mexico, and then played Germany in the quarterfinals. So we had a pretty deep run into the tournament. That is the furthest a men’s team has ever gone to this day. And that, at that time, pushed the sport forward in ways that I’m not sure are quantifiable still. Like, I don’t know how you quantify that. There’s data that says this many people are in the stands and this is what MLS franchises are worth, et cetera, et cetera. But that helped push the sport forward in a real way. So, a deep run into the tournament. And the other experience I have is the Algeria moment, which that moment captured people and captivated people in a way that if we had won that game 4-0, and scored four goals in the first half, it wouldn’t have been the same. It was the emotion of it, and the rollercoaster. They hit the crossbar, we hit the post, we had a good goal called back that Clint Dempsey scored for offside that was not offside. There was this emotional rollercoaster that everyone went through. Even that play at the end, it’s like it gets crossed, oh it’s a goal, oh no, they saved it, oh the ball popped out, now there’s a goal, and so there’s this up and down roller coaster that really captivated people. And so when I think about this summer, if the US goes on a deep run into the tournament, the data says every step of the way, you go further once you get out of your group, the ratings, the amount of people watching and paying attention, the impressions on social media get exponentially bigger every time. And so deep into the tournament will do that, and or an iconic moment, or two, or three, or four, a goal at the death, an unbelievable save by a goalkeeper, something dramatic that happens that captivates people that will be all over social media, all over the TV. Those are things that can change things dramatically. And again, I don’t know how to exactly quantify it, but my guess is there are people, there are kids who are 10, 12, 15 at the time of the Algeria goal, who wanted to ` start playing soccer, or maybe five years old because of that. There are parents, adults who said, that was the first, people tell me this, that was the first soccer game I ever watched, and that’s what got me into soccer. They will now have kids who will love soccer, and their kids will love and that’s how you grow a sport. So if one or two of those things, one or both of those happen this summer, it’s hard to describe how big that would be because mine were in 2002 in Asia. 2010 in Africa, imagine now 2026 with all the growth that’s already happened on our home soil, and what that would mean.

DG: Long before the World Cups and the MLS titles, Landon Donovan was a kid growing up in Southern California, raised mostly by his mother after his parents divorced, while his father, a Canadian immigrant and lifelong hockey player, lived largely outside his day-to-day life. In his memoir, Landon writes that understanding those relationship dynamics took decades and became one of the most important challenges of his life.

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DG: I want to back up and. Kind of just think about the story you tell of yourself. I mean, you are one of the greatest soccer players to ever play the sport in our country. I guess, as you worked on this project, is there anything that surprised even you as you relived all of these memories and chapters?

LD: What I’ve learned about people who are very successful at something, most of the time, almost all the time. They don’t look back and think about the past and reminisce, and enjoy and appreciate. They’re just moving forward because it’s on to the next and on to the next, and I’m very much built that way, very, very much. So, it was not challenging, but it was unique for me. To look back, think back, not physically write, but talk through and have the author Ryan Berman write through all this stuff, and then read it, because I’ve never taken time to stop and think about all these things and put these things on paper. So it’s been an interesting journey. And when you write a book, at some point you kind of get sick of it because you’re editing and you’re reading it over and over, and then you do the audiobook, and so you’re talking about it. You get to a point where it becomes a little bit numb. But in the original, in the first early drafts, when you’re reading it, there’s a lot that surprised me. I mean, what I’ve come to is that this story, my story, is very unique in so many ways, but also extremely common. And so what I mean by that is I grew up in a 900-square-foot home with my single mom. Me, my twin sister, and my older half brother. My mom was a special ed teacher who made $35 to $45,000 a year. And we could barely survive, I mean, I’m being a little dramatic, but like it was hard to have food sometimes, right? And whatever that quote food was, hot dogs and spam and macaroni and cheese and fish sticks, and all these things was all we could afford. The fact that I was able to, with tons of help, come out of that and become a professional soccer player is incredibly unique. I mean, for anybody to make it as a pro is incredibly unique, but considering the lack of resources, it’s unbelievably unique. But the other side of that coin is the story of someone growing up without a father, with a single parent. Who, only in retrospect, grew up depressed is, unfortunately, a very common story too. And there are so many people in this country who deal with all that and didn’t eventually get to end up the way I did. And so it’s, I think, because of that, it’s a powerful story, but it’s also a story that a lot of people will resonate with.

DG: Well, I do think your relationship with your father, I mean, is so intertwined with your entire journey through soccer and through life. So I wonder if we can kind of go back to the very early days. I mean, your dad was a sports fan from Canada, loved hockey, I mean, what are your earliest memories?

LD: My earliest memories are watching my dad play hockey in LA. So he grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, which is end of the year, end of the continent, far, far east Canada. And all they do is play hockey. It’s cold year-round, and they play hockey, so he grew up playing hockey and baseball, ironically. And he moved to the States just after his teenage years and moved to LA, and that’s where he met my mom. So my earliest memories would be going to hockey rinks and watching him play. And at this time, I was seven, eight years old, and I was really into soccer, but I would watch him, and it was fascinating to watch him because he’d often be the oldest guy on the ice. But the way he saw things, and he viewed the game and played, was exactly how I wanted to play in the way I liked watching other soccer players play, where he just had this, he had this ability to see everything on the ice. And that’s really hard. I play hockey now a little bit, and it’s really to do that when you play hockey. So those are my earliest memories with him. Sadly, they were few and far between because he had custody every other weekend, and most of those every other weekends he just wouldn’t show up. So my poor mom too was now stranded. She finally got away from her kids for a weekend, so she thought, and then my dad would just never show up to pick us up. So it was this weird relationship because when we did see him. It was amazing. He was loving and caring and affectionate and a great dad, but then sometimes he just wouldn’t show up.

DG: And how did you and your twin sister deal with him not showing up, and both the disappointment and also the hopefulness of hoping you, I guess, hoping he shows up next time.

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LD: Yeah, in a lot of ways, it would have been better if he just never was, just gone, right? Because you just know, okay, he’s gone. But then you would see him, and it was great, and you’re thinking to yourself, well, why doesn’t he want to see me more? It doesn’t make sense. We did not deal with it well. My sister better than me, but I was very angry as a young kid. I got in trouble at school a lot. I was in preschool. I remember my mom told me I bit a kid on the nose. I had a lot of anger. And I didn’t know until later in life that the impetus was this lack of relationship with my dad. So it was really hard, and what happened ultimately over time was when you don’t have a father in your life or a mother or both, you just, there’s a lot of things you don’t learn, and for me, the biggest thing was I never learned how to be a man. I never learned how to take responsibility for things, how to face confrontation. How to fix things around the house. Like all these little things, I just never learned. My mom didn’t do those things. You know, some women and moms can do those thing well. My mom didn’t. And so there are a bunch of things that I just didn’t learn because I didn’t have my dad around.

DG: What’s the kind of low point that you remember from childhood when it came to, you know, your relationship and trying to have one with your dad?

LD: I think your, your mind and your memory do an interesting thing of not letting you remember some of that.

DG: Yeah.

LD: But I do have vivid memories. We used to meet at this McDonald’s in Ontario, California, and I have vivid memories of sitting in the car waiting. And so we would meet at let’s say three o’clock on a Friday afternoon to go with our dad for the weekend, and 3:30 would hit and four o’clock, and then five o’ and eventually my mom, and you know you didn’t have cell phones at the time, so there was no communication. And my mom would eventually make up some excuse. You know, maybe he was late for work, or maybe something happened, or maybe he’s sick or whatever, and we would end up driving home, and there’s just this really sad disappointment. But the real breaking point came when I was 20. I believe I was 20, I was playing for the San Jose Earthquakes, and we played a game in Kansas City, and a bunch of my dad’s family, who lived in Tennessee and Kentucky, came to the game. And after the game, I was exhausted and walking up the tunnel, my dad and all the family were there, and a bunch of fans were there waiting to get things signed and autographed. And I got on the bus without signing anything, and my dad sent me a really sort of scathing email saying, “How could you not come say hi to us, leave all those fans?” And the end of his email was, “How could do this to me?” And I was like, now I was kind of like a man and willing to confront it. And I just, I wrote him back and said, “How could I do that to you? How could you do all the things you did to me?” And that was sort of the low breaking point where from there we didn’t speak for five years.

DG: Coming up, we’ll have more from our conversation with Landon Donovan.

MIDROLL

DG: Welcome back to Sports in America and let’s get right back into our conversation with Landon Donovan.

What was your therapist’s advice when it came to your relationship with your dad, which was now, you know, not existing after that terrible night in Kansas City?

LD: So she was brilliant. She didn’t care. I would sometimes wish she would call storytell. So I’d tell her these stories, whatever, and she’d just say, stop. I don’t care about the story. Like the story matters, and it helps me understand, but why are you still so upset? I’d say, well, it’s obvious, Juliet. Like all these things, and she would say, well, but deep down, why? Like you know who your dad is now, because it was still bothering me as an adult. She said, you know this is who he is. Why would it bother you still? So, well, there’s obvious reasons and the past pain, and she said, “Okay, here are your options. Your options are you just accept him as he is, you forgive the past, and you try to have a relationship, or you just stop worrying about it because you know who he is and you just move on with your life. But there’s no reason in still holding on to all that if you’re not gonna have a relationship with him. It’s just pointless. It’s a waste of energy.” I was like, fair enough, that is a waste of energy. So I said, “Look, I do wanna have a relationship with him.” She said, the only way you do that, then, is you have to forgive him. And it’s not about what he does or what he says or what he commits to, how he acts, if he changes, has nothing to do with that. It is on you to decide if you are going to forgive. If you forgive him, you forgive him; it’s over, and you move on. So we did a lot of work, and ultimately I came to a place where I was able to have finally have compassion for him because I was now an adult. I was married. I understood. I didn’t have kids, but I could understand why he felt overwhelmed and felt the way he did with kids. I didn’t agree with his decisions, but I was able to understand him and build compassion for that and forgive him, and that changed everything.

DG: It sounds like he went through some hard times as a kid himself, I mean, feeling some sense of abandonment from his own parents, and so there’s something about trauma kind of repeating itself in generations.

LD: As you get older, you start to realize that all adults, all people who make mistakes, a lot of times, yes, they have to be an adult, right, and still be present as an adult and make adult decisions. But a lot of things that shape us are from trauma that happened in our past, in our childhood. And my dad had an awful, awful childhood. He was, his mom died when he was in his early teens. His dad had to move around for work. So at one point, his dad took his four siblings somewhere else in Canada to go to work and left my dad with his uncle and his grandma. So you can imagine the feeling of abandonment when your father takes the other four kids, but not you, and leaves you, right? My dad also grew up, my dad, I won’t get deep into this, but my dad was much darker skin-wise than his four siblings. And we know now that there were, there’s reasons for that. He was teased very much. Canada at that time was very racist, very racist. So he was, he had all sorts of people teasing him all the time about his skin color. And so when you put all that together, and he had no education, no dad, no one that guided him and helped him become a man, you can understand why he made poor decisions vis-a-vis my sister and me. And it doesn’t excuse it. But it helps you understand it. And once you have that understanding and that compassion, you can have a different relationship.

DG: When we spoke, Landon was still mourning his father, and he was grappling with the regrets that can linger even after a relationship has healed.

How long ago did he pass Landon?

LD: He passed December 15th?

DG: Oh, really reason can I ask what happened? Was it sudden or?

LD: So part of the reason why I felt guilty was when he was in Nashville, he had throat cancer. And what happened over time was he beat it. One of my deep regrets in life is I never went to see him, never sent him a message when he had cancer. And I knew he had it, and I was just so angry that I never reached out. He beat it and got through it, but all the chemo, all the therapy created scar tissue in his throat. So over the years, just very, very slowly, the scar tissue kept building and building and building. And it got to the point in the last five years or so where he had to get a feeding tube because he couldn’t eat. He couldn’t swallow. And then eventually he couldn’t speak anymore. So he would try to speak, but like the words just wouldn’t come out. And because of that, over time, he also couldn’t breathe. So it just got worse and worse. He got sick. And once he got sick and they had to put in a breathing tube. He was fine, he was mentally coherent, but every time they tried to take the tube out, he couldn’t breathe. And so eventually we just got to the point where his body was so weak, and he was gonna have no quality of life anymore, and it was time.

DG: Did you have a chance to talk to him about the book and what was in there, and how you were kind of processing your relationship with him in the book?

LD: Yeah, so I sent him one of the first drafts, and I knew he was not gonna like it because it’s not very flattering in the beginning of the book. At the end, I think it’s a beautiful story of reconciliation.

DG: Yeah, it really is.

LD: But for my dad, and it goes to who he is as a person, he would say to me, he would always say this to me. Anytime I said something, you know, I talk a lot about mental health in my life publicly. And he would, he’d always say, “Why are you airing your dirty laundry out there? Why do you need to talk about that?” We just disagreed on that. He wanted to always keep things very private. So he wrote me back, and he said, “Look, there’s one part of this book that is just inaccurate. And you can do what you want, but this is not accurate.” I said, okay, fine, I’ll change it, that’s totally fine. And he said, “I don’t understand why you wanna air your dirty laundry, but it’s up to you, and it’s not gonna change the way I feel about you. It’s up to you if you wanna do that.” And it was actually really impressive because I was not expecting that from him. I was expecting him, I mean, he wasn’t happy about it because it’s just who he is, but. For him to take a step back and say look, if you wanna do this and you think it’s important, then I support you, which is great.

DG: Yeah. How much did that mean to you?

LD: A lot because it also showed his maturity, right? And I don’t know this, but I just feel this around people who get older, kind of get to a point where you go, who cares? I mean, when you’re on your deathbed, is this the thing that you’re gonna care about? No, I saw him, I was there in the room with him on his deathbed. And so he wasn’t thinking about the book at that time. It meant nothing to him. And so I think he was just like, that’s fine, whatever.

[MUSIC]

DG: Landon’s gentle openness and vulnerability is one reason he has become one of the most prominent voices in sports on mental health. We asked him what he would say to the next generation of athletes who are facing some of the same struggles.

As a star in this sport who has been very open about confronting mental health struggles and depression, like what advice do you have for some of these players in their early 20s who might be quietly suffering some of the things that you went through?

LD: For me the the ultimate cure is self-awareness. Once you know you are doing something for a certain reason, you can start to correct that pattern. Once you’re feeling something, and you understand why you’re feeling it, you can sit with it and be at peace with it. When I feel depressed, right, and I’m sitting in this sort of cloud of depression, I am now aware that I’m sitting in it. A lot of people are like, I feel sluggish today. I just wanna lay on the bed. I don’t wanna talk to anybody. They’re not aware of what it is. Once you’re aware of it, you can go, okay, I see you. You know, you almost pull yourself out, and you look down on yourself as if you’re another person. You go, okay, I get it. You’re feeling depressed. Let’s sit with this. Let’s understand it. Here are the tools you have to get through this, and then eventually you get through it, and it passes. But the self-awareness is the key, and the only way you get that, I think, is by talking to someone.

DG: Landon spent much of his life reflecting on the parent who wasn’t there. His memoir also serves as a reminder to appreciate the one who was.

I wanna finish with your mom because you talked about coming full circle, like growing up pretty poor in California, dad wasn’t around, but you loving soccer, and I just can’t imagine what she had to do to make sure that you were in the right places at the right times to be playing this sport and getting to where you are today.

LD: Yeah, I want to, I want people to try to visualize waking up in the morning. By the way, she was severely depressed most of her life, too. So imagine that fog if you’ve ever dealt with that or know someone who’s dealt with that, sitting over you constantly. Getting our kids ready to school, we walked to school. She didn’t have time to take us, so from six years old, we were walking three-quarters of a mile to school, going to work as a special ed teacher. Which if you’ve ever been around people with special needs, it is exhausting, exhausting. She did that, she would drive home, get us at home, and many, many, many days take me somewhere to go to practice. And drive 30 minutes, I practiced 30 minutes away, sit there and wait with me, drive me home, get home at 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, have to like cobble together some sort of dinner. Go to bed, and rinse and repeat, and then on the weekends, drive me all over the place. And I see how exhausting it is for me now, and I don’t have a full-time job, or my wife, who is a stay-at-home mom, how exhausting it is for us just to try to coordinate the logistics, much less driving, and it’s almost a miracle that my mom was able to do it.

DG: Lamdon, what a pleasure. Best of luck with the book. And, I’ll be watching you cover the World Cup this summer. It’s going to be quite an adventure.

LD: I really appreciate this, and I’m not saying this, just, you’re really good at this, because it’s important to listen and then have conversations. And oftentimes when we get interviewed, people sort of have their list of questions, and they go through one by one, but I think people will resonate with this because we’ve gone through similar things, and it’s great to have. Real conversations that I think people can connect to.

DG: Well, I really appreciate you saying that, and hopefully, we get to do this again sometime soon.

This is Sports in America, I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

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Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews we’re originally created by Religion of Sports with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, wherever you get your podcasts.

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