When a club finds itself in trouble, supporters reach out for encouraging precedents.
At Fulham, who climbed out of the Premier League’s relegation zone for the first time in eight games with a victory over West Ham in their last match, they reach for the stars and stripes, part of superstitious faith in the United States cavalry in times of trouble.
Go to Craven Cottage and you will see a cafe named McBride’s, in honour of the American former striker Brian McBride, whose goals helped the club pull off an apparently impossible escape from the drop into the Championship in 2008.
Glance into the stands in their last two home games and there was Clint Dempsey, the Texan who joined on loan for two months and made his first appearance of that spell in Saturday’s 1-1 FA Cup draw at Norwich City.
He should make his home debut in the key league fixture at home to last-place Sunderland on Saturday.
Dempsey knows the territory. He first joined Fulham exactly seven years ago, recruited from the New England Revolution at age 23, one of the several landmarks he has set in his career.
The fee was US$4 million (Dh14.7 million), the highest ever received at that stage by a Major Soccer League club.
His talent, as an attacking midfielder with good ball skills and competitive spirit was clear. The team’s difficult circumstances in his first 18 months demanded that he adapt quickly to English football.
Aspects of his game developed: his heading ability, meeting crosses and set pieces, his eye for long-range scoring opportunities.
One such strike, against Juventus in the Europa League to guide Fulham through to the quarter-finals of that competition, puts Dempsey as prominent in the folklore of the club as McBride.
Fulham’s unlikely run in Europe that year, 2009/10, would end at the final. That dreamy Europa League campaign gave Dempsey the taste for top-level midweek adventures in Europe, and with his stock rising and his goalscoring record improving, he nursed ambitions for Uefa Champions League status. Fulham, who aspire to mid-table security, were never going to supply that.
The divorce was somewhat messy, though the broad welcome Dempsey received at Craven Cottage when the current loan deal was announced suggests wounds have healed since the summer of 2012.
Then, he exempted himself from pre-season training, his heart apparently set on a move to Liverpool. Initially, they seemed keen, but interest faded as other Anfield targets came into view. Late in that transfer window, he signed with Tottenham Hotspur.
Dempsey has always set elevated targets for himself. He is admired in the US for his ascent from a background of few material resources. The fourth of five children in a family who lived for much of his childhood in a trailer parked at the Texas home of his grandparents, he learnt his sport among Mexican immigrants and commuted long distances to play.
He won a college scholarship on the back of his football. He suffered tragedy at 12 when his sister, a promising tennis player, died from a brain aneurysm.
Medals have eluded him. He has been a runner-up in the Europa League, and with New England, in two MLS Cups, and with the US, in the 2009 Confederations Cup.
At Spurs, he finished fifth in the Premier League in what was a mixed season, personally.
He would not replicate his excellent strike-rate from his final campaign at Fulham – 23 goals in 46 matches across competitions, as a midfielder in a middleweight team. And when Tottenham brought in a half-dozen new players, all suitable for Dempsey’s wide midfield positions last August, he recognised that his future opportunities would be limited.
It was a World Cup season. For a man with more than 100 caps, that preyed on his mind. He has three young children, whom he wanted to raise in his home country. Another MLS record was set, when the Seattle Sounders signed Dempsey from Spurs and made him the highest-paid star in the league’s history.
It has been a stop-start return to the MLS so far, initially hampered by injury. The Fulham loan coincides with the break in the US domestic calendar. He will return to Seattle by March 8, a day before his 31st birthday.
The US national-team coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, encouraged Dempsey to seek playing time in Europe and backs a player, to whom he has given the captain’s armband, to be in peak shape in Brazil in June.
“Clint himself has set the highest benchmark for himself,” Klinsmann said. “Obviously, we want the best Clint Dempsey ever and that’s what we’re going to push him toward as we look toward Brazil.”
It will be his third World Cup, and should he get his name on the scoresheet at the finals, he will be the first American to do so in a trio of such tournaments. Should he leave Fulham well clear of the bottom three by early March, any rancour over his previous exit will be erased.
sports@thenational.ae
