MLSsoccer.com polled 22 of our editors, writers, videographers, statistics specialists and social media masters to bring you the Stories of the Year, our annual look at the biggest storylines in Major League Soccer. Contributor Scott French wraps up the list.
Landon Donovan has been so integral a part of the American soccer landscape for so long, nearly the entire post-1994 modern era, that it's difficult to imagine what it will be like without him.
We'll soon find out.
The revered attacker, arguably the most important figure in our country's soccer history, stepped off the field for the last time – Sunday leagues and old-timers games aside – in the LA Galaxy's MLS Cup triumph over New England, capping a legendary career with an ending fit for Hollywood.
It wrapped perhaps the most tumultuous year, and maybe the most interesting, in the 32-year-old attacker's life, one marked by record-setting performances, a World Cup nightmare and the announcement, in early August, that most of us weren't prepared for.
Then he went out and showed how much more he has to give, if he wanted, playing a pivotal role down the stretch as the Galaxy claimed their third championship in four years – his sixth, a new league record – and claiming a Best XI honor for an unprecedented seventh time.
Through it all, he was absolutely Landon, the “reluctant superstar” willing to talk freely about nearly everything, who acknowledged his battles with depression and the need to responsibly address mental-health issues, all the while reiterating how much more important it was to him to be happy and healthy than to be worshiped as a soccer star.
It certainly wasn't the year Donovan envisioned, even if retirement was already floating around his head when 2014 arrived. The Galaxy were coming off a disappointing campaign, but they had reinforced their roster for another title push that he, alongside captain Robbie Keane, hoped to lead.
There would be the World Cup in June and July, his fourth, and if the magic he provided in 2002 and 2010 may have been beyond him this time – and who's saying it was? – nobody doubted that he'd be influential in the lineup or off the bench, right?
He entered the season tied with Jeff Cunningham for MLS's career regular-season goals record, with 134, so that mark would be all his within a game or two. Steve Ralston's assists record, 17 helpers away, was probably out of reach.
Instead, he started the season slowly and hadn't scored a goal – while contributing just three assists, one of them in a CONCACAF Champions League defeat – when he took off in mid-May for Jurgen Klinsmann's World Cup camp at Stanford University.
Everything soon went haywire. Klinsmann, clearly still peeved about Donovan's four-month leave of absence during qualifying in 2012, on May 22 told the US national team's all-time leader in goals (57) and assists (58), and No. 2 to Cobi Jones for caps, that he wouldn't be needed in Brazil.
It seemed a cataclysmic decision, especially with Julian Green and John Brooks, and their six combined caps, making the 23-man roster. And when Klinsmann's teenage son, Jonathan, mocked Donovan via Twitter, it sure looked personal. The omission was decried through most of the American soccer community – even more so among casual followers of the sport who knew few names aside from Donovan's.
Klinsmann had decided Donovan was purely a forward, rather than the hybrid that can step into any attacking position, and gauged that “the other strikers [are] that inch ahead of him ... a little step ahead of Landon in certain areas.”
Forget the iconic goal against Algeria four years earlier. Forget all five of his World Cup goals – same as Lionel Messi's total. Forget the knack for coming up big in the biggest moments. The intangibles weren't given much consideration, and so many (but not all) believed the US were now taking a lesser side to Brazil.
Donovan, of course, was devastated.
“I don't agree with [Klinsmann's] assessment,” he said after returning to Southern California. “I think I was at least as good as everyone else in camp, so from that standpoint, I don't agree with it. I think you guys who know me well know I'm pretty honest when it comes to my assessment. When I say I don't play well, I didn't play well. When I say I played well, I think I played well. And I think I trained and played very well in camp. I think I was one of the better players, and so that's why it stings a little.
“I think at the end of the day, like I said before camp, if I had gone in and didn't feel like I deserved it, then I can live with that. But that's not the case here.”
Galaxy coach Bruce Arena, who took Donovan to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, argued that one must support the coach and respect his wishes, then noted that “if it was my decision, he'd be on the team” and that “if there are 23 better players than Landon, then we have a chance to win the World Cup.”
The US didn't win the World Cup, of course, and could have used Donovan after Jozy Altidore was injured and Michael Bradley was forced into a role that didn't really suit him. Whether that would have made a difference in where the Yanks finished is open to debate.
Donovan responded immediately to the snub, scoring twice in the Galaxy's next game, a 4-1 romp over Philadelphia on May 25, to grab sole possession of the MLS goals mark. He'd net eight more before the season was out to push the record to 144.
LA found their best form after the World Cup with a possession game defined by constant interchange and ball movement, and Donovan's presence was critical to its success. In a 13-game span starting with a 3-0 July 28 romp at Seattle, Donovan scored seven goals and assisted 15 more as the Galaxy went 10-1-3 to challenge, in vain, Seattle for the Supporters' Shield.
It was right around that Seattle game when Donovan decided this would be his final season. He made the announcement Aug. 7, saying that he hadn't in the previous few years “had the same passion that I had previously in my career” but had “felt obligated to keep playing.”
Now he was doing what he wanted to do, and it was liberating.
“There’s sometimes the sense of obligation in people's lives; there's a sense that you have to do something,” he said. “I've never lived my life that way, and I'm sure it's not always popular with everybody. But at the end of the day, I have to live the life I want to live, and I think that's an important thing to go by.
“I think it's very important in life to make decisions that are best for you, best for your friends and family, and, most importantly, best for your happiness. And so, at this point, this is the decision that is best for all those things, and that's why I'm making it.”
His summer tear led into autumn, and he caught Ralston for a share of the assists record in a late-September rout of New York, then notched No. 136, his final assist, a week later against Toronto.
US Soccer gave him a send-off match in October, a Sunil Gulati-orchestrated appearance in a friendly against Ecuador in East Hartford, Connecticut, and he'd by then put the World Cup snub in perspective.
“I'm glad in a lot of ways [that I was cut],” he said. “As crazy as this sounds, some of the worst things that have happened in my life have turned out to be some of the best things, and I had an opportunity to grow a lot from what happened this year. And I wouldn't have had that opportunity had I gone to the World Cup and played in the World Cup. I've grown a lot from it, and I think it's probably shown in the way I've played.”
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The Galaxy grinded through the rest of the season after that, struggling at the finish of the regular season and missing out on the Shield, then toppling Real Salt Lake and the Sounders en route to their fourth MLS Cup final in six years. Donovan wasn't at his sharpest in his final game, but he got everything he wanted from it.
“It was a dream finishing like this,” he said afterward. “… There's no experience like what just happened. If you work a desk job or a 9-to-5 job, there's no real experience where you get to feel that.
“And so I can't imagine that anything can replace that in my life going forward. So I'm going to miss that greatly. That's hard. And I think that's why a lot of athletes struggle after they retire, because you can't get that back. And so I have to be aware of that and know that and find other things that I'm passionate about.”
