Bob Bradley laughed when he was asked whether he had considered that he might have a predicament on his hands if the United States had lost to Jamaica on Sunday. After all, Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey had been given multiday passes to attend their respective sisters’ weddings and U.S. Soccer-funded private flights to get back to the District.
“I’ve never been second-guessed,” grinned the U.S. coach, whose own wedding took place without his brother, Scott Bradley, because of his Major League Baseball career. “We were fortunate playing on the 19th and not the 18th because I don’t think they were going to switch the weddings.”
With how Dempsey played, few people would have been able to tell he had flown in from Texas at 2 a.m., but he corroborated Bradley’s take.
“Irregardless, I was going to go because that’s my sister. That’s my family,” Dempsey said. “We have a manager that’s understanding about family and understands that we were able to make it work out.”
Donovan helped set up Dempsey’s 80th-minute goal, but his off-field priorities also were hardly out of character. This is the same player who essentially chose to remain in Los Angeles over a full-time transfer to the top level of professional soccer in Europe.
“I know we get caught up in the soccer world, but [there] certainly are things that are equally if not more important to a lot of us,” Donovan said about his 7 a.m. arrival. “I’m very grateful that Bob and U.S. Soccer not only let us go but made all the efforts they did to get us here so we could contribute tonight.”
