Jimmy Conrad — The one that got away

Jimmy Conrad, seen here with Brian McBride closing down Italy’s Andrea Pirlo in Kaiserslautern, counts his World Cup 2006 experience as one of the top highlights of his career so far. Photo: Trent Davol, isiphotos.com.

Every fisherman has stories about the one that got away, and every general manager who’s been in the game long enough has made at least one trade that didn’t work out as anticipated. In the past, with players like Brian Ching, Brian Mullan, and Ricardo Clark, the Earthquakes have done a remarkable job in acquiring players just before they blossomed into stardom. The team’s timing failed them, though, when they traded Jimmy Conrad to the Kansas City Wizards for two draft picks — a second-round draft pick in 2003 and a conditional pick in 2004 — in January, 2003.

At the time, Conrad was a 25-year-old central defender. He had started 25 matches in the 2002 season for San Jose while racking up a team-high nine yellow cards, which may have been seen as a sign that wasn’t up to the pace and power of MLS. Conrad has described himself as “a late bloomer,” however, and the years since then have seen him emerge as a key player and leader for both the Wizards and the U.S. men’s national team. Since joining Kansas City in 2003, he’s been named repeatedly to the MLS All-Star team and MLS Best XI, won the league’s Defender of the Year award in 2005, and played in the 2006 World Cup.

I spoke with Jimmy from his home in Kansas City on Thursday afternoon.

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When you were traded, you mentioned that Frank had told you that you needed to score more goals. I guess you took that to heart — you’re leading the Wizards in scoring this year.
It’s been a long time since I thought about being traded and everything that went down to even be in that situation. Obviously, San Jose didn’t think enough of me to keep me around and that’s fine, that’s just part of the sport. But those things that were said to me, not only by Frank but by other people, that’s stuff that sticks with you and obviously having a few goals this year, that’s just another reminder that they made a mistake all those days ago.

I’m pretty sure they would all agree with that at this point. You’ve been an All-Star, Best XI, and Defender of the Year. That says a lot.

Well, that was my goal, then. In some fashion, I accomplished the goal. You can’t see me right now, but I’m patting myself on the back.

In terms of those individual accomplishments, what have you been proudest of?

In terms of individual achievements, what stands out the most is being named to the World Cup team. That would be number one by a long shot. Being named MLS Defender of the Year is nice, being named to the Best XI is always a nice honor. The reason that those are nice honors, or any type of league-wide attention I might get or any award I might garner, is that a lot of it is voted on by my peers, coaches, media, and it’s just nice to know that I have that respect, not only in my own locker room but around the league.

You’ve won an NCAA Championship, MLS Cup, the U.S. Open Cup, and the Gold Cup. Do you know if anybody else has done that?

There’s got to be some other UCLA guys that have done that.

Cobi Jones, maybe.

I also won a national championship at the youth level. The only thing I didn’t win is the high school championship, and I can’t get those years back (laughing). What are you going to do?

Obviously, at the end of the day when I’m finished — I mean, it means a lot to me now, but since I’m in the thick of it, there are still more things that I want to do, more things that I want to accomplish with my team. So I don’t feel like I’m finished getting those things just yet, but like you said, when I’m done I’ll look back and be very proud of those things, and that not only do I have individual accomplishments but also I have team highlights. It proves that I’m a guy you can count on to win games.

What do you think makes a winning team? You’ve been part of a lot of them.

It’s definitely good looks, you know? I think that just exudes confidence (laughing). No, I don’t really know what it is. I mean, obviously when you play soccer, one guy is just part of the puzzle. It really has to be a nice blend of personalities and motivation.

In (San Jose in) 2001, we had a lot of guys who were just on the brink of what they were going to become. Wade Barrett, Richard Mulrooney, Joe Cannon — and we just had so much to prove. And we ended up getting a coach in Frank Yallop who was thinking the same exact thing. We had Troy Dayak, who was coming back from a serious injury, and he had a lot to prove. Jeff Agoos had just gotten traded and he had a lot to prove. Everybody had that same thing, that chip on their shoulder. I just feel like I might be a guy that helps make sure that everybody continues on that same track, that we don’t get sidetracked from what our goal is, and that’s to prove everybody wrong. I feel very passionate about the underdog. I’ve been one for a big part of my career. The teams that I’ve been on, they’ve always had that same kind of thing, that same kind of feeling — that we were the underdog and we had something to prove, and those are the teams that seem to have success.

Now, if we look at Houston, they’ve done a good job of winning championships and still keeping that feeling, feeling like they’ve been slighted in some way. That’s a credit to Dom and the rest of the guys, because a lot of those guys were cast-offs at some point, so they haven’t lost that edge. That’s something I admire about their team and their success.

I have to ask you about the World Cup because you played in the Italy match, which was a high point. What was that like?

It was amazing. I think just in terms of the World Cup experience, it was kind of a microcosm of my career. I always feel like I need a year or two of buffer to get caught up and to feel like I’m good enough to play with the people I’m playing around me. In MLS, it took me a couple years to get my feet wet, to start to feel like I could be a guy who contributes at a high level. Even in college, the same thing. It took me a year or two to really feel like, “You know what? I could be a guy that could play at UCLA.” High school, the same.

So the thing about the World Cup was, the first game I didn’t play against the Czechs, but I warmed up. And I was like, oh man, these guys are — the Czech Republic was amazing, and they played really, really well. And I was warming up the last 30 minutes of the game, and I was like, “I think I can play with these guys, but I’m really nervous right now,” you know? I didn’t get in, but my attitude started to shift to “I can play with these guys.” I started to think in those terms. “Now that Bruce actually called me to warm up, there’s a good possibility that I might play against Italy,” you know? I started giving myself the mental preparation just to be ready for that opportunity. So when Italy rolled around, I didn’t have as much time to think about it because Eddie Pope got a red card and all of a sudden, we had to make a change. I think that worked in my favor because I had less time to think about it, it was go out there, enjoy the experience, and just play.

It was just kind of funny how I had that one game buffer, then I got to play, then I got to start the last one. It just worked out the same as the career path I’ve taken, just in a three-game span. That’s just how it worked for me.

In terms of the Italy game itself, it was an amazing experience, probably the best experience I’ve ever had playing soccer. Not only the game, what happened and all the drama that was attached to that, our team’s response after losing to Czech Republic, but I had my family in the crowd — my dad who hates to travel, hates to fly, it was Father’s Day, he was there, and all these other story lines that were really, really neat for me. It was a good moment, not just for myself but for everybody that believed in me the whole way — all the support I got from people who saw what I could do when I was a kid and believed in me the whole way through.

I loved it. I loved every single minute of playing in that game. Just the whole World Cup in itself. I mean, I know everybody has a sour taste in their mouth, but I think I learned at that level, and when you compare it to 2002, it’s a real thin line between success and failure. If you really look hard at it — if we go into that game 1-1 versus Ghana at halftime, I think we come away winners in that game, I really do. We would have had the momentum. But it’s kind of a, we could argue, crap penalty call that wasn’t merited by any stretch, that changed the whole outcome and our mood as we headed into the locker room. It’s just one of those things. We could argue in 2002 that if South Korea doesn’t score against Portugal in the 89th minute, then we don’t go through. You need a little bit of that luck.

It really is amazing just how different things could have been if a couple balls had bounced a different way in either of those situations.

Absolutely. We were pretty close to playing against Brazil in the quarters. We weren’t that far away. It’s unfortunate but you have to pick up and move on. U.S. Soccer will be better because of it.

Back to the 2001 Quakes. What was that MLS Cup final like for you? You were here for the dark days of 1999 and 2000.

We went from worst to first. Every team has the identity of its coach, and once Frank came in, he really changed the whole culture of the team, and the whole mindset. It was really worlds apart. Obviously he made a lot of personnel changes and we won the Landon Donovan sweepstakes, so a lot of things just fell into place.

Like I said, there was a lot of similarities — everybody was working for the same thing within that team, from Frank all the way down. Everybody had something to prove, and that was the motivation. Even when you got Landon, he had something to prove. He wanted to come back and show that he could be a good player and there was no reason to write him off, even though he came back from Germany. Everybody had that common bond, and I think that was the primary reason for our success in 2001, from my perspective.

Take me back to the day in Columbus, when you guys won everything.

It was tough. L.A. had a great team, a lot of firepower, and actually the one guy who had underachieved for that team was Luis Hernandez, and he ended up scoring the first goal. That was kind of a boon to them, because their one guy who was underachieving all year all of a sudden decided to show up and play well in the final. You could feel their confidence, just from that.

I think the turning point of the whole game was Landon scoring just before halftime, and not just any kind of goal — he scored an amazing goal, where he probably shouldn’t score. It was a tough shot, and for him to hit that one was very, very classy. If we don’t get that goal, I don’t think we win that game. Not only do we not even up, but I don’t think we score for the rest of the game. Maybe Dwayne comes in and does some magic at the end, maybe if we’re pushing forward we can nip one, but I just think that gave us the confidence to look at each other at halftime and say, “you know what? We can do this. We can beat these guys.”  And I think that really took the wind out of the sails of the Galaxy. They’re thinking, “now we’ve got to fight and scrap and get our one-goal lead again,” which they could never get. And I thought we tightened up and played better defense after we scored.

It was very similar to the World Cup, in a way. After Clint Dempsey scored (against Ghana), very similar in terms of timing when Landon scored, and that led us to victory in San Jose. Then, after we gave up the PK in the World Cup, it was kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. It was a vital goal that Landon scored, and if he doesn’t score that there, I don’t think we go on to win the game.

OK, back to the present. What about this weekend’s game?

At this point, this is a vital game for both teams. If either team wants to make a legitimate push to make the playoffs, this is a game where both teams need three points. I don’t think ties are going to do either team any favors — they won’t get either team where they want to go. So, in that capacity, I think it’s going to be a great game. Obviously, Nick Garcia and Scott Sealy are going to have some added incentives to beat us, and from my perspective, we’re catching the Quakes at a bad time. Outside of Ramiro’s injury, the team is playing really, really well. It would have been nice to catch them in the first month or two of the season, when they were still figuring things out. Frank always does a good job, he always has his teams well prepared, and we don’t expect anything less this game.