AFRICAN SPORTS MONTHLY
'Sports is our Business'
  • Home
  • NEWS
  • Radio
  • TV

Seattle's odd couple

11/26/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Obafemi Martins rolled the ball with the teeth of his boot, ready to spring at the edge of the penalty area. Clint Dempsey flew around him on the right. But the Nigerian’s flick went one way and Dempsey, the other. For once, Seattle Sounders’ strikers were not on the same page. The attack broke down.

The Nigerian’s arms flew into the air and slapped down at his hips. He says he “gets along with everyone off the pitch,” but Martins’ face twisted in disappointment and blame. Dempsey, an American icon who once put his fist through a window when left off a starting XI, chased his team-mate and put a finger in his face. Heated words were exchanged. You did not need to be a lip-reader to know tempers were flaring toward red.

You might think the two just do not get on, or that nerves were frayed over poor form. But it is just not so. The Sounders are flying. Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey are among the best attacking duos in Major League Soccer history, and their understanding on the pitch is as close as you get to telepathy in the game today.

They scored 32 of the team’s 66 MLS goals this season. That is nearly fifty per cent of Seattle’s scoring output this term, not counting their 20 assists.

“We have fun out there,” Martins, compact and threatening like a coiled snake on the field, told FIFA.com. “Sometimes we disagree, but show me two players who don’t. We have a connection. If I get the ball, he knows I’ll look for the right pass. I know he will too. Dempsey knows the game.”

It often looks like Dempsey and Martins are playing their own little game, looking only for each other. Buzzing around the attacking third, sniffing openings, they drag defenders out of position. They roam the tight spaces like predators, looking for the smallest pockets or cracks to exploit. “Playing with Oba is like playing pick-up,” said Dempsey, a veteran of three FIFA World Cups™. He is
USA’s captain and ranks among the country’s best-ever players. National team coach Jurgen Klinsmann uses words like “hungry” and “driven” to describe him. “The two of us link up and it’s always fun.”

Speaking the same language
Football is a language. As spectators we are drawn to teams and players who communicate most harmoniously, most poetically, most often. The triangles Dempsey and Martins carve with the ball between them seem infinite. They are demanding. Their standards are high.

Martins is 30-years-old and Dempsey 31. They took different paths to the rainy Pacific Northwest, but both were forged in hardship. Martins grew up playing in the crowded streets of Lagos,
Nigeria. He left home early, his lightning speed and explosiveness catching the eye in Italy. “It happened so fast, I was dizzy,” Martins said of leaving his family as a teenager and moving to a new continent. Dempsey grew up in rural poverty, the fourth of five children, in the US state of Texas. His father, a carpenter, struggled to shuttle him the long distances to training, to nurture the talent his son showed early. Dempsey’s sister died of a brain aneurysm when the two were only teenagers.

Dempsey’s best moments came in London, at Fulham, where he pushed the modest Cottagers to a UEFA Europa League final and became a club legend. A move to Tottenham Hotspur was a disappointment and so came the big-money transfer back to MLS, where he began his career. Martins threatened to become one of the top strikers of his generation early on, but he ended up wandering Europe. A star-turn at Inter Milan behind him, he moved to Newcastle United in the north of England, then to Rubin Kazan, Birmingham City, and eventually Levante in Spain. Stuck in the quicksand of fading reputation, Martins saw Seattle as a fresh start.

“I’m not as fast as I used to be,” the Nigerian said with a chuckle, but he still leaves defenders in his dust every week. “I like to have the ball at my feet now, to play a little football.” Dempsey continues to live by an old creed: “I play with a lot of heart and I do all I can to help get a win.”

The Sounders’ hit-men were held goalless in the Western Conference final first leg against LA Galaxy at the weekend. But do not bet against the Oba-Dempsey tag-team at home next Sunday with a spot in the league’s one-off championship decider, MLS Cup, on the line. “We just put them together,” Seattle coach Sigi Schmid said. “Practice or game, it doesn’t matter. They know what to do.”
By: FIFA.com
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Menu

    All
    2014 FIFA World Cup
    Athletics
    Basketball
    Boxing
    Commonwealth Games
    Cricket
    Golf
    Hockey
    Marathons
    News
    Olympics
    Rugby
    Soccer
    Spotlight
    Tennis
    Track And Field
    Volleyball
    Women Soccer
    Wrestling


    Picture

    RSS Feed


    Tweets by ASMONTHLY

Tweet to @ASMONTHLY

Contact Us

    Contact Us

Submit

Donate & Support Our Efforts at African Sports Media Network