Dempsey's International Debut

On This Day in 2004, the Program's Joint-Top Scorer Makes His First Appearance

Rain fell steadily over Columbus on November 17, turning Crew Stadium into something less than a theater and more like a proving ground. Just over 9,000 supporters scattered themselves across the lower bowl, their presence muted by weather and circumstance. The United States had already secured a spot in the final qualifying round. Jamaica needed victory to survive, but Panama's simultaneous demolition of El Salvador had rendered even that mathematics irrelevant before the evening concluded. What remained was something Bruce Arena valued more than the result itself: an opportunity to examine the futures he might need in six months.

Among those futures sat Clint Dempsey, 21 years old, wearing the Major League Soccer Rookie of the Year honor he had received just the day before. The recognition symbolized his unlikely ascent—from a prospective defensive midfielder buried on New England's depth chart to one of the league's most productive attacking forces, having scored seven goals in 21 matches despite missing five games with a broken jaw that he had initially played through undiagnosed. He had entered the Revolution camp as a reserve behind Shalrie Joseph. He had emerged as essential, a driving force whose hunger Arena had noticed during the national team's training week.

"When you don't make it into the lineup, it makes you more hungry," Dempsey had reflected before traveling to Columbus, "and you want to do that much more to reach the next level."

The evening would test precisely that hunger, though not in the ways Arena might have anticipated. Debuts in meaningless matches carry their own peculiar pressure—the absence of consequence creates a vacuum where evaluation becomes everything. There would be no rescue goals, no dramatic clinching moments to obscure imperfection. Just cold rain, a sparse crowd, and Arena's clinical assessment of whether a rookie midfielder possessed the composure to function when nothing and everything hung in balance.

The match opened with the urgency Arena demanded despite qualification already secured. The Americans pressed forward, and in the 15th minute, they produced a sequence that suggested professional standards would not be abandoned simply because mathematics no longer mattered. Pablo Mastroeni threaded a pass down the right channel where Eddie Johnson—the 20-year-old sensation who had announced himself with four goals in two previous matches—controlled with his right foot before striking left-footed past Donovan Ricketts. The finish carried the poise of a player whose confidence had calcified into certainty. Johnson had now scored in each of his first three international appearances, only the second American since 1937 to achieve that distinction. The ball had barely settled in the net before he nearly doubled the advantage, first pressuring a clearance in the fourth minute, then whiffing an open chance from twelve yards, then hammering a shot directly at Ricketts.

But Jamaica possessed neither the luxury of experimentation nor the willingness to accept elimination passively. In the twenty-fourth minute, coach Sebastiao Lazaroni made his decisive substitution, replacing Damion Stewart with Jermaine Hue, one of the Reggae Boyz's most obscure selections. Hue announced himself with his first touch, spinning away from two American defenders and injecting dynamism into Jamaica's midfield that had been absent. Three minutes later, he disrupted possession again, found Ricardo Gardner advancing from left back, and suddenly the Americans found themselves out of balance. A throw-in allowed Portsmouth striker Ricardo Fuller to drift along the end line, where Ramiro Corrales—one of Arena's experimental selections, a defender earning World Cup qualifying experience for the first time—brought him down inside the penalty area. Andy Williams, the former Revolution midfielder, converted the penalty in the 27th minute, and the scoreline read level.

Arena made his substitution in the 66th minute. Dempsey replaced Corrales and entered a match whose emotional temperature had shifted but whose tactical demands remained unclear. The Americans were playing to win despite having nothing tangible to gain. Jamaica was playing with desperation tempered by distant mathematics. And then, seven minutes after Dempsey's entrance, the variables collapsed entirely. Oguchi Onyewu, cautioned once already, received his second yellow card in the 73rd minute and departed, leaving the United States to navigate the final 17 minutes with 10 men and a midfield anchored by a rookie making his international debut.

Dempsey absorbed the complexity without visible panic. His touches were accurate, his positioning sound, his understanding of when to release possession and when to advance suggesting a player whose tactical intelligence exceeded his experience. And then, in the eighty-sixth minute, he produced the moment that would define his debut in the memories of those witnessing it.

Receiving the ball deep in American territory with Jamaica committed forward and space materializing ahead, Dempsey accelerated. 50 yards stretched before him—open grass, retreating defenders, the penalty area drawing closer with each stride. He drove forward with the kind of audacity that separates players who survive from players who impose, his legs churning through fatigue, his vision fixed on the goal that grew larger as defenders converged from multiple angles. He reached the penalty area, defenders closing, the angle narrowing, his lungs emptying, and finally—finally—the accumulated exhaustion caught him. The shot never came. The moment dissolved not from poor decision-making or technical failure but from the simple reality that a twenty-one-year-old midfielder playing his first international match had run out of fuel at precisely the moment opportunity demanded more.

"I made some rookie mistakes, giving the ball away," Dempsey said afterward, his assessment characteristically direct, "but I got positive feedback. I did some good things, as well. We were playing to win and [Arena] told me he wanted me to get involved in the attack, that the defensive midfield was a little too conservative, and to take it at them a little."

The final whistle confirmed what Panama's three-goal victory over El Salvador had already guaranteed: Jamaica would not advance. The Reggae Boyz, expected by many to join the United States in the final round, finished their campaign at one win, six losses, and three draws under Lazaroni—a collapse that stood as one of qualifying's most surprising narratives. Panama, improbably, would join Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States in February's hexagonal, where the top three would secure passage to Germany.

For the Americans, the evening carried significance that transcended the draw. Arena had extended the unbeaten streak against regional competition to twenty-nine matches. More importantly, he had gathered intelligence on players who might be required when the qualification transformed into tournament play. Jonathan Spector, the 18-year-old Manchester United defender and grandson of original Boston Celtic Art Spector, had looked composed in his debut. Dempsey had demonstrated hunger and tactical understanding even as fatigue overwhelmed ambition in the final minutes.

And Johnson, departing for a training arrangement with Manchester United the following week, had now scored five goals in his first sixty-one minutes of national team playing time—a conversion rate that bordered on absurd and suggested European clubs monitoring his progress had sound reason for their attention.

Yet Dempsey's 50-yard run lingered in a way Johnson's goal did not. Goals in blowouts and goals in dead rubbers carry their own weight, but they rarely reveal character. That sprint—desperate, audacious, ultimately unsuccessful—had revealed something Arena valued more than clinical finishing in a match without consequence. It revealed a player who understood that debuts without drama still demanded everything, that evaluation never ceased, that the absence of stakes created its own pressure more revealing than any scoreboard.

"Playing for the national team is something I used to think about when I was little," Dempsey had said before the match, reflecting on practices that felt faster than games, on preparation that would serve him when he returned to New England for the following season.

In Columbus, on a cold November evening, that had been enough. The road to Germany continued, and Dempsey—rookie of the year, future consideration, 21-year-old midfielder from Nacogdoches who had learned the game in a trailer park among Hispanic immigrants—now traveled it as well. Not as a passenger, but as someone Arena had judged capable of contributing. The work of building a World Cup team, Arena understood, rarely announced itself with coronations. Sometimes it revealed itself in rain, in front of 9,000 supporters, in a 50-yard sprint that ended without a shot but confirmed everything a coach needed to know about hunger.