WASHINGTON – Officially, Brad Guzan remains the US national team's starting goalkeeper despite the return of iconic veteran and World Cup hero Tim Howard this week after a year-long sabbatical.
“Tim has accepted for the time being to be the No. 2, and then down the road there will be a fight for the No. 1 spot like in every position,” head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said last month, when Howard's involvement in the friendlies against Peru and Brazil was confirmed. “He accepted that, and we are really happy to have him back on board because of who he is and what he has done for us.”
But Howard, holder of 104 appearances for his country and more than 300 for his English Premier League club Everton, hasn't been a backup in a long, long time.
And with the former MetroStar coming into this week's USMNT camp in fine form, it's natural for fans and other observers to wonder: Just how far “down the road” does Klinsmann plan for that battle to take place?
That's the largest of the many questions swirling over a squad with much to play for – and much to prove – this fall. Guzan and Howard have been USMNT colleagues for years, but now everyone's watching with new eyes as they find their longtime roles reversed.
“Jurgen came out in the summer and showed his support and backing of me then; he's come out and supported me again. Nothing changes, from my point of view,” said Guzan when asked about the situation on Monday. “Tim and I get on really well, both on the field and off the field. Your job as a player doesn't change. You have to go and perform, it doesn't matter whether you have a No. 1 title associated with yourself."
With a well-established reputation as a team player and locker-room leader, Howard is highly unlikely to stew over a bench assignment. But the United States' all-time leading 'keeper in appearances doesn't really have “backup” in his DNA, either.
“It’s always a good feeling to be with this team. I’ve done it for so many years, for so long, it’s like riding a bicycle,” Howard, who was not available to media on Monday, told ussoccer.com this week.
“I’ve been in competition with Brad for the last eight or nine years. He and I are good friends, everyone knows that, but for me nothing changes," he continued. "It’s no problem. This is where everyone wants to be.”
Incumbency and pecking order aside, it's hard to tell which shot-stopper most deserves to work between the posts in this month's games, which are being treated with extra value because of the CONCACAF Cup clash with Mexico on Oct. 10. (That's also to to say nothing of the fact that 2018 World Cup qualifying begins in November.)
Using “an advanced algorithm that takes every recorded on-ball action on the football pitch” to measure a player's “positive influence” on play, respected number-crunching site Squawka.com rates Howard as the EPL's top goalkeeper over the first four games of the new season, while Guzan comes in a No. 9 in the 20-team league. Yet in Howard's rough 2014-15 campaign, where he was peppered with shots and saved just 60 percent of them, allowing a goal every 64 minutes on average, his Squawka stats are far uglier and he doesn't even rank in the top 20 among 'keepers.
Guzan generally is kept plenty busy himself while guarding Aston Villa's nets, and had to scrap just to keep his starting job over the past year or so.
He finished 15th in last season's Squawka rundown, with off-color possession work dinging his score, and ranks seventh – whereas Howard ranks fourth – among goalkeepers in the Premier League's official “EA Sports Player Performance Index” statistics engine. (That video game-sponsored rundown might raise some eyebrows, however, given that heretofore gaffe-prone Manchester United newcomer Sergio Romero currently tops the list.)
“In all professional sports you always have someone either pushing you, or you're pushing someone else,” Guzan said on Monday. “That's the nature of professional sports, and I've been in this business now long enough to know that. Being in Europe where it's a little bit more cut-throat than here in the US, you develop a thick skin, you develop a strong mentality and a strong will to succeed. So nothing changes in that sense.”
Guzan's last experience in a USMNT kit was July's underwhelming Gold Cup campaign, where the Yanks fell far short of expectations, though not necessarily due to any explicit fault of his. Howard's, on the other hand, was the heroic resistance to Belgium in the World Cup Round of 16, an epic performance that was ultimately in vain as the US lost in extra time.
Many USMNT fans are less concerned about who's wearing the first-choice gloves than they are about Klinsmann's decisions about the defense in front of him. The backline has looked decidedly wobbly of late and a long list of center back options have been called in for the coaching staff to evaluate.
But 'keepers are traditionally talismans for the US, and that looks unlikely to change any time soon. Can the same be said of Klinsmann's mind?
