On This Day in 2012, the American Reached 50 Premier League Goals in His Final Home Appearance for Fulham
The record books had barely settled after Bolton when Dempsey went and added another chapter. April 9, Craven Cottage, Chelsea, the visitors. The match ended 1-1, Frank Lampard's first-half penalty canceled out by an 82nd-minute Dempsey equalizer that felt less like a salvage job and more like a statement. 22 goals for the season. The suitors were already circling. The Cottage faithful, for their part, were beginning to wonder how much longer they could hold onto him.
Three weeks and one heavy defeat at Everton later, Fulham welcomed Sunderland for their final home game of the season. The occasion carried a weight that the standings alone couldn't quite capture. Martin Jol's side had just pulled off a famous win at Anfield, their first there in living memory, and arrived at the Cottage sitting on 49 points, one shy of what would be their best-ever Premier League total. Jol himself, returning to the dugout after missing two matches with a chest infection, had done the arithmetic publicly. Win both remaining games, and they finish on 55. A record, comfortably. One more win and a draw would equal the 53-point benchmark Roy Hodgson had set three years prior.
Sunderland, for their part, were a side in transition. Martin O'Neill had steadied the ship since arriving in December, steering them clear of the drop, but a summer rebuild was coming, and everyone knew it. Several of his players were auditioning for their futures. The problem, as O'Neill would later acknowledge, was that none of them had managed 10 league goals all season. Dempsey, by contrast, was on 22.
Jol made a single change from the Anfield win, bringing Mahamadou Diarra in for Alex Kacaniklic. Fulham were quickly into their stride. A visionary Danny Murphy ball in the seventh minute sent Damien Duff racing clear, but Sunderland goalkeeper Simon Mignolet was sharp at his near post to deny him. The crowd sensed something, though. When a marauding Diarra was hauled down 25 yards from goal, and as referee Martin Atkinson pointed to the spot where the free-kick would be taken, a murmur ran around the Cottage. They knew who was stepping up.
They'd seen it before, of course—the Bolton free-kick, curling and precise, struck with controlled ferocity. What Dempsey produced here was, if anything, better. He bent the ball around the wall and into the top corner with such venom that Mignolet, who got fingertips to it, could only watch it nestle into the net. Twelve minutes gone. His 23rd goal of the season. And the 50th of his Premier League career, the first American ever to reach that milestone. The Cottage erupted. Somewhere in the stands, a large banner urged him to stay.
Sunderland wobbled but steadied. They passed the ball with more composure than their position suggested, and on 34 minutes, from a flowing move that caught Fulham flat, right-back Phil Bardsley received the ball from Ji Dong-Won and absolutely lashed it home from 30 yards. A genuine screamer, only his second league goal of the campaign. The Cottage fell momentarily quiet. It lasted approximately 60 seconds. Mousa Dembélé gathered the ball, drove forward with the directness that had defined his second half of the season, and struck a shot from distance that clipped Michael Turner and looped over Mignolet and into the top corner. Craven Cottage crackled back to life. Jol was animated on the touchline. O'Neill slumped.
The second half was a study in Fulham composure punctuated by Sunderland anxiety. Mignolet made a sharp stop to deny Duff, and Dempsey came agonizingly close to a second when his header from a Brede Hangeland ball over the top drew a goal-line clearance from Jack Colback. O'Neill threw on Nicklas Bendtner and Fraizer Campbell in search of a lifeline, and the game's nerves tightened as a result. Bendtner headed down into Campbell's path with the goal gaping, the kind of chance that ends careers when missed, and Campbell dragged it wide. Schwarzer beat away Campbell's last effort deep in stoppage time. The final whistle blew. Fulham 2, Sunderland 1. 52 points. Jol, who rarely allows himself sentiment, took a lap of honor.
The numbers around Dempsey had become almost impossible to contextualize by this point. 23 goals from midfield, predominantly from wide positions. 50 Premier League goals in total, a barrier no American had ever cleared. Fourth in the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year vote, behind only Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes—the kind of company that, even in his finest dreams, a kid from Nacogdoches, Texas might not have imagined keeping.
"Clint doesn't surprise me in his game," Jol said, with the measured pride of a manager who had backed his instincts. "He knows what the fans think of him, and hopefully it will be enough for him to sign his new contract."
The banner in the stands had said the same thing, less diplomatically. Whether Dempsey had already made up his mind is hard to say. What is certain is that the crowd that afternoon, and the journalists filing their match reports in the Cottage press box, felt the occasion deserved marking. "If this was Dempsey's final game at Craven Cottage," Julian Bennetts of the Daily Telegraph wrote, "it was the perfect way to say goodbye." It had the ring of a eulogy written in hope that it wouldn't be needed.
It was needed. On August 31, without fanfare, Fulham released a short statement. Clint Dempsey had joined Tottenham Hotspur. The club thanked him for his contribution and wished him well.
Fulham finished ninth that season, beaten 2-0 in their final game at White Hart Lane—a ground Dempsey would soon call his own. The record points haul went unclaimed by a single point. But the season itself, with its European campaign and its unlikely run of form and its one brilliant American at the center of it all, stood as something the club would measure itself against for years to come.
The Cottage had given him a proper send-off, even if nobody knew it at the time. He had, characteristically, given it one back.