Coming Out to Play, page 8
There were two high points for me during the 2007 season. The first was my first goal as a U.S. professional soccer player, which came toward the end of the season in a game against New England. Ned Grabavoy played a ball to me over the top, and I ran onto it. I had a one-on-one with the goalie and I passed it with my left foot to the side and that was my first goal. It was just a goal, but I was excited to have achieved that milestone and let myself enjoy the moment.
The other high point came in the middle of the summer when my roommates, Tim and Danny, and I went to the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Canada for a month of training and competitions. (FIFA stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which is the international governing body of association football.) It was a big deal and an amazing coincidence that the three of us went together, because they pick the best American players who play for U.S. teams and for teams around the world to create a single team of about twenty guys to play against the best teams from Brazil, France, Holland, you name it. Twenty-four teams played fifty-two matches. More than a million people came to watch the games, which were played in six cities across Canada. We had a really great showing, but ended up losing in the quarterfinals to Austria.
The 2007 season was just a warm-up for 2008, because that was the year we won the Supporters’ Shield and then the championship—we exceeded everyone else’s expectations, but not our own. Sigi had brought in some new guys—a combination of promising new talent and well-experienced older players—and he traded away some players who weren’t part of his plans. We all got along and we had a good locker room—there weren’t any big egos, so it was a very positive environment.
From the start of the 2008 season we were playing well and I was really happy with my game. Although I didn’t pay attention to what was being said in the press, I know that my father did. He kept all the newspaper and magazine clippings and printed out reports from online. Shawn Mitchell from the Columbus Dispatch called me “the most dangerous American left-side player early in the season.” Soccer America Magazine put a picture of me on their cover under the headline “MLS Rising Stars.” I was named MLS Player of the Week for week seven of the season, right on the heels of David Beckham, who was playing for the LA Galaxy and was the previous Player of the Week. (I’d had two goals the Saturday before in our come-from-behind win over the San Jose Earthquakes—which put us into first place in the Eastern Conference. The MLS Player of the Week is chosen each week of the MLS regular season by a panel of journalists from the North American Soccer Reporters [NASR], which includes members of the print, television, radio, and online media.) I got six goals overall for the season and was an MLS Goal of the Year nominee. I was also named a Best XI, which is an annual award recognizing the league’s top eleven players at each individual position on the field: one goalkeeper, three defenders, five midfielders, and two forwards.
In the middle of the 2008 season I got voted onto the “starting XI” MLS All-Star team. The first eleven players are determined by votes from fans, the media, players, and coaches, as well as the general managers. The All-Star coach and the MLS commissioner pick an additional seven players for a total of eighteen, and they also decide who the starters will be. Because 2008 was my first year as a starter for the Columbus Crew, I was in shock when I found out I’d been picked. But I wound up not being able to play because soon after I was named to the U.S. Olympic team and the schedules conflicted. So instead of playing on the All-Star team I wound up going to Beijing. It was all so exciting and happening so fast that I could hardly take it in.
I had some doubts that I’d actually make it onto the Olympic team because I wasn’t chosen for the Olympic qualifiers, which take place several months before the actual Olympic team is chosen. This requires some explaining, because the process of putting together the Olympic team isn’t exactly straightforward.
Several months before the Olympics I was invited to go to China by the U.S. team’s head coach, Peter Nowak, to practice with what effectively was a prequalifying camp for the Olympic team. Getting chosen at that point was no guarantee you’d make it onto the team that played in the actual qualifiers or the final Olympic team itself. The prequalifying camp is more of an opportunity to demonstrate your skills and for the coach to see if you fit in with the kind of team he has in mind. We played a couple of games against the preliminary Chinese Olympic team and when we got back home I wasn’t chosen to be on the team to play in the qualifiers. I was really sad about that, but I set my mind on doing the best I could during the regular season with the Crew in the hopes that I might get called up later for the final Olympic team. And that’s how things played out.
This is how it was reported in the soccer press at the time. On July 17, 2008, Michael Lewis of MLSnet.com wrote:
Coach Nowak said of Robbie, who had scored five goals in sixteen games (started in all sixteen) with the Crew, which made him second on the team, “It’s no secret that Robbie has [had] a great season . . . and the whole team is playing very well. In the last couple of months, Robbie has started to play the game everybody loved to see him play. He’s had a lot of very significant progress in the last six, seven months and this is good to see. He’s healthy, he’s fit, he’s scoring goals and he’s helping his team win . . . He fits the picture very well.”
A few days later, Andrea Canales, writing for ESPN Soccernet, said:
No other player on the squad forced his way onto the list more than Robbie Rogers. Dropped from the team during qualifying, Rogers channeled his drive into his MLS campaign with the Columbus Crew, performing so well that he earned accolades around the league and became the youngest player elected to the All-Star game this year. Of course he won’t participate in that game because his efforts succeeded in restoring him to the Olympic Squad instead.
I was thrilled when I got the word, because to compete for your country with Team USA and with all of your fellow athletes from around the world at the Olympics was such an incredible honor. And it was something I’d dreamed of from a very young age, so going to Beijing to compete was a dream come true.
Several days later I joined the other seventeen players (including my former Crew roommate Danny Szetela; my friend and former teammate Sacha Kljestan; and two of my teammates from the Terps, Chris Seitz and Maurice Edu) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, for training camp, where we were also fitted for opening ceremony uniforms and given our Olympic equipment. Then we headed to Hong Kong for more training and exhibition games against the Ivory Coast and Cameroon Olympic teams. And from there we headed to Beijing, where we were scheduled to play against Japan in Tianjin on August 7, then the Netherlands—also in Tianjin—on August 10, then in first-round play against Nigeria in Beijing on August 13.
The high point for me was the opening ceremonies, which were the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. Before we marched into the Olympic stadium, the whole U.S. Olympic team—soccer players, basketball players, everyone—met in an auditorium, where President George W. Bush spoke to us. (I can’t remember a word he said.) From there we lined up and headed out to join up with the other athletes from around the world who were in a long line circling the outside of the stadium. Then, as we walked through the tunnel leading into the stadium, we all started chanting, “USA! USA! USA!” And once we came through the tunnel and onto the field everyone in the audience—there were more than ninety thousand spectators, if you can imagine!—started chanting along with us. And with everyone taking pictures there were thousands of flashes going off every second. It was surreal!
So we marched around the track with the other teams from every corner of the globe, with each team holding their national flag high. It was such an incredible range of humanity on the field and in the stands. I looked out into the stadium to see if I could find Mom and Aunt Angel, who had flown over to be with me, but it was hopeless.
Once we finished circling the track we were directed onto the field, where we lined up with our team and watched the opening ceremonies—the lighting of the torch and the whole opening ceremonies show, which was totally over-the-top! Unfortunately, because we were on the field, which was where the show was staged, we couldn’t actually see the whole thing, so we watched on the huge video monitors. By that point it was all so overwhelming and I was so dead-tired from the travel and the training and the jet lag that I was ready to get out of there. But even if I’d been able to leave and get into bed, there would have been no way to sleep because I was so filled with excitement and joy and pride over just being in China representing my country.
We went into the competition, which was structured like a tournament, with high hopes of at least making it out of our group and maybe even coming home with a gold medal. Because of how the tournament is structured, every point and every game counts, so it was very exciting (I was a starter for each game), especially playing in front of such huge crowds. But our hopes didn’t last long. We beat Japan, tied Holland, and lost to Nigeria, and that was the end of it.
It was really disappointing, and after we lost several of us went out to a bar. I was hanging out with my friends and a bunch of American girls and after more than a few drinks we said we were going back to the hotel to get some food. Our coach didn’t want us staying in the Olympic Village because he thought we’d get in trouble, so we were staying at a nearby hotel getting in trouble.
Somehow I ended up alone in my room with one of the girls and we made out for a while on my bed. She had a boyfriend, but I guess she thought making out was okay and I was happy to leave it at that. I don’t even know how she wound up in my room, but as drunk as I was I know I did it to prove to the guys that I wasn’t gay. Of course, that was all in my own head because now the only person keeping a scorecard was me.
The next day we were on our way back to the United States. It was the middle of the season with the Crew, so I had to get back to work.
The Crew had such a good season in 2008 (17-7-6) that we clinched a playoff spot two weeks before any other MLS club. And then in the final against the New York Red Bulls we played before a sellout crowd of twenty-seven thousand—including thousands of fans from Ohio—at the Home Depot Center (now the StubHub Center) in Carson, California. Best of all, my family was in the stands—my mom and dad, brother, sisters, and grandparents—to support me. And they were there to cheer us all on when we beat New York 3–1 to win the MLS Cup. After the game my sisters Coco and Katie came down to the field and hugged me and then I went up into the stands to hug the rest of my family.
Later, in the locker room, we hosed each other down with champagne. I don’t remember doing any of the hosing or much of anything from right after the game, but there’s a photo of me doing it, so I must have. Nick Green from the Daily Breeze newspaper, who was in the locker room, wrote that I had a huge grin plastered across my face as I “munched upon a piece of pepperoni pizza.” I apparently said, “It never tasted this good.” And, I added, “I don’t know if I’ll ever have a season this great again.”
My doubts were well placed, because while there were still high points to come over my next three seasons with the Crew, I never had another year like 2008. (I played a total of sixty-nine games in the 2009–2011 seasons and had only four goals. I’d had six goals in 2008 alone.) And after Sigi left in 2009 to coach the Seattle Sounders, the Crew never had another year like 2008. We won the Supporters’ Shield in 2009, but in 2009 we were still pretty much the same team that Sigi had built and trained.
After that there were a lot of changes, but toughest for me was how different my new coach, Robert Warzycha, was. Sigi knew how to get the best out of his players. Robert wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t the right coach for me and for a lot of guys who played for him. Although Sigi was hard on me, he also knew when to give me encouragement. Bobby really knew the game as well as any coach, but he wasn’t great at communicating with his players. The end result was that his style of coaching didn’t bring out the best in me. It also didn’t help that I started the 2009 season trying to play through a hamstring injury, which was really dumb because you need to let these things heal or you wind up making them worse.
Despite having to take time off to recover, I wound up making nine appearances that year with the senior men’s national team—and eighteen national team appearances in all during my final years with the Crew, scoring a total of two goals in international competitions. As part of the national team in 2009 I played in my first Gold Cup, which is a big tournament here in the United States. The crowds for these tournaments are huge! When we played against Mexico in New York at Giants Stadium it was a sold-out crowd of sixty thousand people. At Soldier Field in Chicago we played against Honduras and it was another sixty thousand. You can’t imagine the sound that a crowd of that size makes when the teams first run onto the field. It’s deafening and it gets your heart pumping. Then in 2010 I was named to the thirty-man roster for the World Cup in South Africa. (I wound up being an alternate, which was a big disappointment, but still it was a huge opportunity.) And I was on the Gold Cup roster again in 2011. (Unfortunately, we lost to Mexico in the finals in Los Angeles.)
By 2010 I knew I wanted to get traded to another team. I was ready for something new and I felt that I needed to be in a place where a coach could bring out the best in me. But that’s not such an easy thing to orchestrate, especially when you’ve still got a year left on your contract. My hope was to maybe play for Sigi in Seattle, but my agent wasn’t able to make anything happen.
Then the next year there was all-too-public speculation about whether I’d be traded, but as my father told me from having read about it online, the Crew management made clear that they weren’t going to trade me to anyone unless they were presented with “a heck of a deal.” I found the whole process really upsetting and had to tell my dad to stop telling me about the gossip he was reading on the soccer blogs—and there was plenty of it (although it’s the kind of stuff that only soccer insiders cared about). When you read good stuff, you get overconfident, and when you read bad stuff, it feels like it’s the end of the world. I tried never to pay attention to any of that and still don’t.
What mattered to me was where I’d be heading once my contract expired, especially since I felt like I’d wasted the 2011 season playing for the Crew when I was more than ready to move on. I knew I wasn’t performing to the best of my abilities and wasn’t improving my skills, but the Crew management seemed determined to keep me until the clock ran out. I still don’t know why, because they could have easily traded me for someone they really wanted and who really wanted to play for them.
In the end I had solid offers from Portland and Leeds United (in the UK). And much to my surprise the Crew offered me a contract, too. I thought they had to be kidding! As great a time as I’d had with the Crew in the past, and as much as I knew I would miss my friends from the community where I lived (virtually all of my friends on the team had left by then), I had to get out of there. The only decision left for me was, do I go back to the West Coast to play for Portland or head to England and try for a second time to realize that old dream of playing soccer on the world stage?
Now for the Robbie Rogers behind the headlines, the interviews, and the triumphant photographs. I don’t mean to suggest that my years in Columbus were all bad on a personal level, because they weren’t. There were plenty of times when I was pretty happy playing for the Crew. For example, when I first arrived in Ohio and moved in with Tim and Danny it turned out to be the perfect place for me after the bruising experience of living on my own in Heerenveen. Tim and Danny were good friends, we had a lot of fun together, and they weren’t interested in who I was dating, so I didn’t have to lie or anything.
Landing in Columbus was something of a fresh start. It was exciting to meet new players, see a new stadium and new training grounds, and to experience how things worked with Major League Soccer. It was all so new that everything I was struggling with about my sexuality faded into the background, at least for a time.
My daily life with the Crew was very different from how we did things in Heerenveen. We’d wake up at seven-thirty, eat breakfast at home, go to training around nine, start training at ten, be done by noon or one p.m., and then you had the rest of the day to do whatever you wanted. So I’d hang out with Danny and Tim: we’d go to the gym or to the pool by our house. We often cooked at home and had people over for small parties, or we’d go out to eat together. The three of us were pretty much on the same page at that stage of our lives: we were only nineteen or twenty, playing soccer, and trying to make a name for ourselves. And during the 2007 season we were preparing for the U-20 World Cup. So we’d all work out together to push each other so we could be at our best by the time we left for Canada in midsummer.
The locker room was the one place where I was routinely reminded that I wasn’t one of the guys. Like every locker room I’d been in for years now, the words “fag” and “gay” were tossed around like an all-purpose put-down, and as much as I tried to protect myself from feeling wounded every time I heard someone say “that’s so gay” or “don’t be a fag,” it cut deeper into an already raw wound. Those words were sometimes said to me directly, like, “Robbie, don’t be so gay,” but of course no one knew I was gay, so they weren’t using those words to put me down as a gay man. Still, it was like a knife in my gut every time.
