Chris Wondolowski knows that the flashbacks are coming. They barge to the front of his brain whenever he hears the word 'Belgium,' or whenever a pitiless fan reminds him of his shame. They recede as he shuttles two young daughters around his hometown, or beams at their school's Halloween costume parade; but there are 'certain triggers,' Wondo says, that 'send your mind off spinning.' And he knows that, as the U.S. men's national team returns to the World Cup for the first time since his miss, the triggers will multiply.
When the memory does resurface, he tries to “compartmentalize it, and roll it up into a tiny ball, and try shoving it down,” he says — “until it comes back later.”
In fact, he’s not sure he ever will. And he’s come to accept that. He’s nonetheless proud of the story he’s written, a “surreal” underdog tale unparalleled in American soccer. The miss, he knows, “is gonna be a part of me and this story.”The story begins in 1980s Danville, California, before the U.S. had even qualified for a modern World Cup, in a country where college soccer was the realistic pinnacle — a pinnacle that, for a while, Chris Wondolowski seemed like he wouldn’t reach.
He ventured to a local MLS combine; due to a miscommunication, he missed the call back for Day 2. But he showed up anyway. The San Jose Earthquakes saw enough to select him in, essentially, the eighth round of the 2005 MLS draft. He signed a contract worth less than $12,000 a year, and wrangled together a few roommates, and"make no mistake about it," hisWondolowski toiled in reserve teams as the Earthquakes relocated to Houston and became the Dynamo.
It instead became fuel. Beginning that winter, when workouts droned on and on, and the season seemed distant, there were days when the memory of his 2014 despair would push him through a monotonous drill or a grueling set, because he never wanted to feel it again. It’s that “inner circle,” Wondolowski says, who helped carry him through the darkest days in 2014. Their opinions are the ones he cares about, and the ones he turned toward “for validation.” Their love always overshadowed online hate.
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