One of Chris Wondolowski’s very favorite perks of his job has little to do with his chosen field. Every once in a while, he is offered the opportunity to give motivational speeches to elementary schoolers and youth soccer teams around San Jose. The newly-crowned all-time career MLS goal leader remains charmingly bewildered by these types of invitations, even after all these years and all those goals.
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“There are many different paths to your goal,” the Earthquakes forward recites as an example of one of his go-to lines. “Sometimes, you get to take the highway. Other times, you have to take a more winding road.”
Wondolowski typically sticks to sports clichés like this; phrases that link directly to his own unorthodox route to the top of the record book. His earnestness might earn eye rolls from those in their later teens. Luckily his usual audience is younger, full of wide-eyed youths who remind him of himself. It tends to play well.
Of course, Wondolowski is not known just for being one of the most prolific goal poachers in Major League Soccer history, or even primarily for that. His talks thus occasionally address some heavier themes, too, although vaguely.
“There will be bumps and bruises along the way,” he continues. “That can make it even more special when you reach the summit.”
Those impressionable fourth graders might eat this type of stuff up, but you and I both know that you’ve probably already made up your mind about Chris Wondolowski, and that his setting the MLS scoring record does little to shift your perception. Even those who barely follow soccer may snarl at the mere mention of Wondo’s name.
To the vast majority of American sports fans, Wondolowski will forever be remembered first and foremost for his stoppage-time miss against Belgium in the Round of 16 of the 2014 World Cup. That the USMNT missed the most recent addition seems to have only increased the vitriol for the man who could have fired them into the quarterfinals four years prior. All this time later, type his name into Google, and the first auto-fill option remains “Chris Wondolowski miss.”
And yet, if you’ve made it this far without rage clicking out of the article, I ask you to consider Wondo anew. Having grinded his way to such an incredible accomplishment, see him through the fresh eyes of his young pupils, rather than distorted lens of fandom.
You may never like Wondolowski, but trace the full arc of his remarkable, Shakespearean career, and you might come to begrudgingly respect him – and offer a muted cheer rather than a grunt now that he has an all-time record to his name.
Give Wondolowski this, at the very least: he is unimpeachably the greatest soccer player Chico State University has ever produced. Wondo was always a good athlete; good enough to have earned an offer to run track at UCLA while in high school. But soccer had always been his true love, so he opted to chase the dream, even if it meant playing in Division II.
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Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay area, and with Chico not too far away, he was a regular in the stands at ‘Quakes games throughout high school and college. Unaware how meaningfully their careers would later overlap, he was one of the earliest proponents of a young San Jose forward named Landon Donovan. Never particularly chill, Wondolowski would gush to his college teammates during MLS games about having played club ball for or against some random guy or another.
“That was the type of fanboy that I was, and that I still am, of the game,” Wondolowski said last month. “It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m on that (career scoring) list. Especially to be mentioned with Landon in the same breath.”
Few have ever been as thrilled to have been the 41st pick in MLS’ typically-irrelevant supplemental draft as Wondolowski was in 2005 when his hometown Earthquakes selected him. (Factor in the four-round SuperDraft that preceded it, and he was essentially an eighth-round pick.) Wondo was just happy to be a pro. He spent multiple years in this blissful stasis – uncertain of his future, perpetually at risk of roster cuts, but still juiced that being a professional soccer player was his life.
Wondolowski made the relocation with the franchise to Houston after that first season in 2005, only to be traded back to the reformed ‘Quakes in 2009. That was the move that changed everything. Perhaps the wildest of all crazy Wondo stats: He scored just four goals in his first four-and-a-half season in MLS. He’s now netted 144 (and counting) in the decade since.
“I consider myself a late bloomer in all aspects, physically and mentally,” Wondolowski said, vastly understating the unlikelihood of his mid-career turnaround. “Those first couple of years were so valuable, because I was able to learn how be a professional, what it takes, how to grind, how to see the game mentality. Those are the things that helped me along the way. Some get their chance too soon, and they’re not ready.”
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While some might have sulked on the bench, he studied his older teammates’ habits as well as the patterns of the game, honing the soccer IQ that would become his trademark. His long wait for a breakthough gifted him perspective, too, about the impermanence of his chosen profession, and of what is truly important.
That would become important later on down the line.
Wondolowski was probably always destined to irk at least a portion of domestic soccer observers. He has a brilliant mind for the game – reading its flow, picking his spots, forever well positioned. The goal that broke the all-time scoring record on Saturday was kind of perfect, then, in summarizing his whole career. It was far from pretty, Chicago Fire goalkeeper David Ousted dropping the ball at his feet, Wondolowski at the right place at the right time for a tap-in.
“I’ve probably crashed in on every shot like that 1,000 times, and 999 times (the goalkeeper) catches it and holds it and I have to run back,” Wondolowski told the media after his record-breaking performance on Saturday. “This one time, I saw it come to the ground and was able to just get a toe on it.”
Wondolowski’s skill set is one that only reveals itself upon repeat viewing. At first glance, he seems to be the antithesis of how many would like to see the sport evolve in this country: he’s athletic more than technically skilled, a try-hard rather than a natural, more brute force than deft touch. To those who’d rather MLS look more like the top European leagues, Wondolowski is the personification of what needs to change.
He did not, however, need to become a pariah among a wide swath of American sports fans. The roll toward that unfortunate destiny began with a choice that wasn’t his own, at the expense of a role model who he’d long idolized.
Wondolowski was, in many ways, a casualty in the power struggle between then-USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann and the U.S. Soccer Federation. In an effort to consolidate his control, Klinsmann controversially cut Donovan from the U.S. men’s national team’s 2014 World Cup squad. Wondolowski was not necessarily a like-for-like replacement, but was read that way by many American soccer fans. That narrative – his taking the spot of a player who had secured his legend four years earlier against Algeria – made Wondolowski a convenient scapegoat even before that fateful night in Salvador, Brazil.
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To quickly summarize a game most USMNT fans have willfully attempted to block from memory: despite being thoroughly dominated by Belgium and thanks almost exclusively to a superhuman effort by goalkeeper Tim Howard, the knockout round match was somehow still tied in stoppage time. Wholly against the run of the play, the ball somehow fell to second-half-sub Wondolowski inside the Belgian box. Regardless of who he may or may not have replaced, Wondolowski was on that roster specifically to finish chances just like that one. From six yards out, he lifted his effort over the bar.
American resistance crumbled shortly thereafter. Belgium scored twice in extra time, and the USMNT entered such a swift downward spiral that it’s almost hard to imagine these days that they were a better-placed Wondo finish away from the World Cup quarterfinals.
“One of the biggest mistakes of my life,” Wondolowski describes it. He paid for it as such. The confusion after ESPN announcer Ian Darke mistakenly told the masses that the forward was offside anyway may have blunted at least some of the criticism – but only some.
An agonizing passage from Jordan Ritter Conn’s must-read, supplemental feature on Wondo from later that same year describes the horror-stricken forward foolishly reading through his Twitter mentions for several long minutes in the locker room after the miss. No one would have blamed him for crawling into a hole, never to reemerge. Many on social media beseeched him to do just that. After all, as a player in his 30s who was a long-shot to make the team to begin with, it’s not as though Wondolowski was ever going to get a real chance to make amends, at least not on a stage like that.
His whole life built toward a singular shot at glory, and he missed.
And yet his story didn’t end there.
Some take to the role of Public Enemy No. 1 more naturally than others, converting jeers from the crowd into motivation fuel. That wasn’t, Wondo’s personality, at least not at first.
“I’m definitely the guy that wants to be liked by everybody,” Wondolowski said, “and likes being nice to everybody.”
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But coming up with a back-to-back champion Houston squad whose success bred contempt, and later featuring for the Goonies ‘Quakes teams whose below-the-belt tactics did the same, he’d picked up plenty of lessons on how to constructively feed off criticism.
Wondolowski scored eight goals in the first two months following his return to MLS following the 2014 World Cup. He scored 16 more in the following season, and has tallied in the double-digits every year since. He has four in 2019, all of them coming on Saturday.
“It’s a testament to his character,” said Tommy Thompson, his ‘Quakes teammate since that fateful 2014 season. “He’s one of the most resilient guys – if not the most resilient guy – that I’ve ever met. I hope to one day have even just a fourth of his resiliency. That’s what I’m shooting for.”
It’s tempting to map a narrative of human triumph on to the way that Wondolowski pushed on, in the face of ridicule and without much a carrot to reach for in the end (at least not anything close to as exalted of a stage as Brazil 2014). But for the player himself, to throw himself full-on back into the sport he’s always loved most was something closer to self-preservation.
“I’ve been able to use (the World Cup miss) as a tool of motivation,” Wondolowski said. “That was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. But at the same time, when things are tough, in the offseason, when I start hitting a wall, I use that to keep pushing, and to find strength … I’ll never get that chance back. But I can still do things.”
That even included an unlikely return to the USMNT for the 2016 Copa America Centenario, and further call-ups for the team’s final, doomed 2018 World Cup qualifiers in late 2017 – the latter of which provided his detractors with even more ammunition, even if he didn’t play in either of those last two games. Wondolowski has, over time, learned to block out most critiques besides those which he values most.
“I want to be considered a good teammate,” he said, when asked what he hoped his ultimate legacy would be when all is said and done. “That means the most to me, is my teammates’ opinions. That has helped carry me, in so many different ways. I put less emphasis on other people’s opinions then teammates and family and coaches’ opinion.”
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That was one of the hard-won lessons of 2014: The support of teammates like Howard and Michael Bradley during his darkest hour helped him realize what was most meaningful in his own career.
“They could have pointed fingers, and talked about how much further their careers might have gone if I had scored,” Wondolowski said. “But they had my back from literally that second. That meant more to me than anything, any call-up, or any goal.”
Given how many he’s netted, that’s not a hollow statement, although you suspect he’d trade a least a portion of that camaraderie to have finished off one goal in particular. The miss will always be there, somewhere in the back of his mind, but he’s long since stopped dwelling on it – and also cherishes the sense of self it forced him to hone.
After Saturday, the sheer number of Wondolowski’s makes will always be there, too, etched into the league record books forever. Years down the road, when still-raw emotions have finally faded, some impressionable youngster will come across his name on the MLS all-time scoring list and click through to the Wikipedia page, piqued by not discouraged by the damning end to the opening section (as it appeared prior to publication of this story):
Maybe, taken in full, with fresh eyes and removed from the fallout, the more revealing parts of Wondo’s character and most remarkable parts of an unlikely career will shine through at last. And even if they don’t, his placement atop one of the league’s most prestigious lists says plenty all on its own.
(Photo by Casey Valentine/isiphotos/Getty Images)
