Hamburg, Germany – The police blockade begins a block away. Then come the cops standing like sentries leading to the team hotel. A metal detector greets every visitor entering the lobby, and you’d better have enough identification to pass through immigration if you want even a sniff of the elevator.
While a barrage of curious residents leaned over the barricades Saturday, around the corner an elderly local stared at the crowd of people peering through the hotel’s back windows.
“Does the U.S. team think they are in danger?” he asked. “Hamburg is a safe city.”
Yes, it is, but while Brazil’s soccer team is known for its superstars and Italy’s for its style, the United States’ team is known for its security. The U.S. team’s Friday morning arrival for this month’s World Cup surprised even Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city with 1.7 million people and the second-largest port in the European Union.
While the puzzled German media quizzed the Americans about life as a possible terrorist target, it was business as usual for the team. Coach Bruce Arena assured the Germans that police escorts are par for the course, and he won’t send his players out on the town in camouflage.
The usual freedoms come in a city where the nightlife is wild and where three Sept. 11 hijackers lived before the attacks. The U.S. is the only visiting team headquartered in the heart of a major city; it was Arena’s choice.
“It suits our lifestyle, our mentality,” Arena said. “I want our players to enjoy the World Cup, and the way Americans enjoy living every day is to get out into the culture and do things and not be locked up out in the country.
“The time away from the team is important for players. The ability to soak up a World Cup is important. I think it’s invaluable to have them in the right frame of mind.”
The team plans a group event for the players’ families and has a Wednesday function with Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust. Their frame of mind as they arrived could not be better, even though their Group E – with Czech Republic, Italy and Ghana – is widely considered the second-toughest in the 32-team field.
The U.S. team is healthy, and it’s more experienced than in 2002, when it reached the World Cup quarterfinals. However, it is not experienced at facing higher expectations. The more than 60 TV cameras at Friday’s practice proved it is not a sleeping giant anymore.
“We’re still on the outside looking in,” Arena said. “We’re getting better, but we have to prove it on the field.”
This is a U.S. team that stops traffic more with its security detail than its stars. Its best player may be goalkeeper Kasey Keller of Borussia Mönchen- gladbach, which finished halfway down the Bundesliga, the major leagues in German soccer. Only three players have totaled double-figure goals in international competition, led by Brian McBride’s 30.
But Landon Donovan has developed into a top international midfielder while with the Los Angeles Galaxy, and Eddie Pope and the Colorado Rapids’ Pablo Mastroeni anchor one of the better defenses in the Western Hemisphere.
“We bring a more experienced team, plus some new players that give us a different dimension,” Arena said. “I think the difference between the players who returned in 2002 from the ’98 Cup and the ones that returned in 2006 from the 2002 Cup is success. It’s success we experienced in Korea. I think that’s important.”
The mind-numbing pressure that surrounds them shouldn’t be a burden.
Nine players on the roster played in the 2002 World Cup, and six have played professionally in Germany. The panting media will be as familiar to the players as the stadiums for some, not that experience will score any goals for them.
“I don’t think anyone goes into it thinking, ‘Oh, we did well in 2002. Now we know we’ll do well here,”‘ McBride said. “If we have any confidence, it’s because we look around and think we have a good group of players.”
And unlike in 2002, they enter the Cup pretty healthy. Midfielder Claudio Reyna, in his fourth World Cup, is nearly healed from a hamstring injury. Midfielder John O’Brien can’t go a full 90 minutes because of a sore groin, but he did start in friendlies against Morocco and Jamaica.
In the meantime, they’ll fine-tune their game plan for the Czechs, whose 6-foot-8 star Jan Koller should be recovered from a knee injury when they meet June 12 in Gelsenkirchen, near the Dutch border. Monday, the U.S. has a closed scrimmage with Angola, a first-time Cup participant.
The task ahead is huge. Heightened expectations weigh on a team that rarely has played well on European soil and resides in a group with two European powers. And if the U.S. advances to the round of 16 by finishing second, it likely will play defending champion Brazil, the favored winner in Group F.
“If we advance from our group and play Brazil, I’ll be the happiest man in the world,” Arena said.
John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
POSTCARD FROM GERMANY
U.S. team will have no shortage of nightlife in hopping Hamburg
U.S. coach Bruce Arena said he wants “our players to enjoy the World Cup.” That’s why the U.S. is the only team based in a big city. Well, the Germans are in Berlin, but they’re used to it. Pity the poor Dutch. Netherlands is stuck in Hinterzarten, a bump in the road of 2,400 people near the Swiss border. Arena, meanwhile, picked Hamburg, which regularly fights Munich for the No. 2 spot behind Berlin as Germany’s wildest city. From my first night out Friday, Hamburg does try harder. The Reeperbahn is a wide boulevard still known as Hamburg’s red-light district but recently infiltrated by rollicking rave clubs, discos and British pubs. I walked down Grosse Freiheit, the Reeperbahn’s teeming walking mall, under signs reading “Table Dance Dollhouse,” “Superfly Disco” and one place suspiciously labeled as simply “Love.” At the rocking 99-Cent Bar I had a couple of Dortmunder beers for 1 euro ($1.30), then mistakenly walked into Rasputin, where the, um, waitresses all seemed to have the high cheekbones, large hands and deep voices I remember seeing once in the Philippines. America? Welcome to Hamburg.
Tschuss,
John Henderson
