Beans and I were laughing our asses off yesterday remembering a very painful day of mine back in 1998. Back when I was just a young-in, playing with the New England Revolution and making $774.78 every two weeks ($800 of that going to rent per month).

I had this girlfriend see, one who I thought I was going to spend my life with. A girl that I’d been together with for years and that meant buying her love by means of plane tickets from LA to Boston, along with dinners and whatever else I could afford (not much).

Back in those days MLS would send all of their young P-40 players overseas for 3 months worth of training. That meant throughout my first three years in the league I would spend time at Glasgow Rangers, Bayer Leverkusen and playing matches around Lisbon with the P-40 team. By far some of the best experiences I ever had, hands down.

The dark side of that is trying to have a relationship with your girlfriend, one that realistically wasn’t going to happen with success. Phone bills, letters (no real e-mail at that time) and gifts were the only way to try and stay on top of things considering your other half is at college while you’re on the road.

The off-season of 1998 was taking me to Bayer Leverkusen, home of Frankie Hejduk (Landon wasn’t there yet). I was given four days off before the flight from Los Angeles to Cologne, so I did what every young kid in love would do, I headed out to see my girl.

I should have known instantly where this one was going, the shadiness apparent (Love isn’t blind, only we are is what I realized afterwards). We headed out to a club, had some drinks and did some dancing, headed back to the house to do what a lot of us did, but something horrible happened. Mid-coital, she called me Chris……..

Now I’ve been called a bunch of names before, but Chris has never been one of them.

Shocked, I walked straight into the shower, scrubbed myself as if I was Forest Whitaker in the Crying Game and headed home without a word. I didn’t really sleep much that night, made my way to LAX in the morning and I was off to Germany for three months.

I was at Leverkusen with Matt Napoleon and Chad McCarty during that time and it turned out to be the second (being at Rangers was legit) best trip I’d take. Nights at Uncle Sam’s that turned into mornings, jumping on the train to Amsterdam and exploring the country with guys from Germany that I wouldn’t see again until the U-23 US v Germany friendly in Jacksonville three years later.

See, Soccer Saved My Life that trip. Even though I’d go back for another bite of the apple, I learned the most important lesson I would ever learn while I was gone.

People come and go, but the game will always be there for me no matter what. Even if it’s not always on my terms.

dunny

image via Valesti