|
A state-of-the-art New Jersey hockey stadium may seem like a strange place for a soccer player with 100 national team appearances to be plying his trade. But for goalkeeping legend Tony Meola, this is just the latest chapter in a storied career that has encompassed World Cups, an MLS championship, spells at English sides Brighton and Watford, and even a stint in an off-Broadway show.
The former Red Bulls keeper, who captained the U.S. soccer team in the 1994 World Cup, has swapped floodlights and turf for the hard surfaces and tight angles of the indoor game. Newark’s Prudential Center, better known as the home ice of the New Jersey Devils, is also home to the New Jersey Ironmen of the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL), where Meola is one of three goalkeepers on the roster.
“It’s a completely different game – I just kind of get by on athleticism and instinct, and I still move pretty good,” says the 39 year-old, who joined the team four months ago at the start of its inaugural season. “If anyone knows me, then they know that I am trying to get better in whatever I do, so it’s one of those things that you try and learn from every day.”
With the Ironmen just past the midway point in their season, the New Jersey native is now eyeing future opportunities, which are likely to be away from the touchline.
“We’ll see what’s next; you never know,” he says, explaining that he would like to continue working in soccer when his playing days are over. This could involve “being part of an organization and, hopefully, one day, putting a team together from the front office side of things.”
Although unwilling to dismiss coaching completely, the soft-spoken Meola feels that he would be just as well served working in the corporate side of the game. “The business part intrigues me; I think I can be successful in the front office,” he says, adding that he is getting some corporate experience with the newly formed Ironmen.
“I work in the front office, slowly getting my feet wet, understanding a little bit about the day-to-day operations of the office, that type of thing.”
The Prudential Center is, of course, just a few miles from the Garden State soccer hotbed of Kearny, where Meola grew up, effectively bringing his career back to the point where it began.
Meola is one of a number of famous U.S. players, including John Harkes and Tab Ramos, who learned their soccer in Kearny, which is famous for its Scottish heritage. “In our town you were cool if you played soccer, which wasn’t necessarily the case in a lot of different places,” he says. “I didn’t know what other kids were doing in other towns – I didn’t realize until later on that they were doing other things.”
The distraction of other U.S. sports was not enough to quell the teenager’s passion for soccer, even while playing both soccer and baseball at the University of Virginia, and Meola eventually left college to pursue his ambitions with the national team.
“I had a dream to play in the World Cup like Dino Zoff; he was my hero,” says Meola, whose father had played for Italian side Avellino before emigrating to the U.S. “I realized that at an early age, in 1990 – that was enough for me to decide to leave school.”
Shortly after the 1990 World Cup, Meola also became one of the first U.S. players to try his luck in the English league, playing briefly for Brighton and Watford, but his time in the U.K was overshadowed by work permit hassles.
“The soccer experience was nice, but dealing with the work permit every day in 1991 was one of the most difficult times in my career. Having to spend two to three hours a day on the phone finally wore on me after four and a half, five months.”
Meola admits that he would have liked to stay in the U.K., but he returned to the U.S., playing for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers as the country was gearing up to host its first ever World Cup. Eventually joining the rest of theU.S. squad at a residency camp in California, the keeper was able to tap into growing stateside interest in the game.
“Endorsements were coming in, and, quite honestly, if I had gone to Europe at that point, I would have been making half as much money as I was making in the States. There probably would have been some longer term financial gain, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I was 24 years old. I was getting ready for a World Cup, and trying to be as successful as I could be.”
The 1994 World Cup, where the U.S. was defeated on the Fourth of July by eventual winners Brazil, still rates as the highlight of Meola’s career. “To captain your team in your own country is a personal favorite of mine. It is probably the most personal satisfaction that I have got, because that was an honor given me by my team-mates,” he says. “When I found out, it completely brought me to my knees, it floored me.”
Spells playing for the Buffalo Blizzard in the now-defunct National Professional Soccer League (NPSL) and the Long Island Rough Riders followed, before Meola joined the MetroStars for the inaugural season of MLS in 1996.
Three years later Meola moved to the Kansas City Wizards, where he won the MLS Cup and League MVP title in 2000, before returning to his home state in 2005, signing for the Red Bulls.
This second stint at Giants Stadium ended in what the Meola describes as the low point of his career. “My biggest disappointment was being released from New York a few years ago. In August of that year [2006], I felt like I was playing the best soccer of my career, and three months later I was out of a job.”
Now, with almost two decades in the professional game under his belt, Meola is in a good position to assess the health of U.S. soccer, particularly the quality of its coaches.
“I think we’re at the point where we don’t need a foreign coach in America. There’s no need – there are some great, great young coaches coming up in our league, guys that played in our league, and understand the players in this day and age.”
“To me, we’re very healthy in the coaching ranks,” he adds, citing D.C. United head coach Peter Novak and Houston Dynamo head coach Dominic Kinnear as amongst the most talented.
Outside of his goalkeeping duties at the Prudential Center and his front office work for the Ironmen, Meola is also preparing to launch a line of goalkeeping products, called GK1.
“Myself and my two partners have built [the company] from a paper clip,” he says. “It has been interesting; I have learned a hell of a lot.”
Arguably Meola’s best-publicized non-football endeavor, however, was his
acting career, which even involved a stint in the off-Broadway show Tony & Tina’s Wedding.
“I was a theater major in school,” explains the keeper, adding that his focus has moved onto the business world. Having previously owned a mortgage brokerage, Meola is looking at opportunities in sports. “Now, I have got my other business that we are building, and I work in the Ironmen front office - so I haven’t done very much [acting].”
Despite his thespian background and colorful career, the veteran feels that he is hardly the extrovert goalie stereotype. “No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I think that in my daily life I am a little more of an easygoing guy than most.”
“Maybe when I was younger, I was a little bit crazier, but I have got three kids now and a great wife, and I try and use the Lord to lead me a little bit in my life.”
|
