As a USMNT fan, who have you loathed the most? My 3 finalists 1) Rafa Marquez - for someone alleged so composed, he was truly violent with intent to injure on multiple occasions. Cobi Jones piñata was the most notorious. 2) Torsten Frings - 2002 purposeful handball. No further explanation needed. 3) Joel Campbell - his atrocious WCQ dive that gave Matt Besler a red should have resulted in a meaningful multi game suspension if Concacaf had any cohones. Atrocious.
-Rafa Marquez -95% of Mexican Futbol fans… just about the most miserable fanbase in Futbol -a huge chunk of US sports media
Think that three honestly covers it, really. Borgetti was a thought, but he was never scary or respectable. Who was "the US plays like my grandma" guy?
ooohhhh god, lest we forget. The Guatemalan fish............ made Neymar look like he plied an honest trade.
Adding Nigel de Jong to the contender list. Stole away Stu Holden’s oh-so-promising career (among others). To this day I’d still love to run across him in a back alley… Seconding Korman Coulibaly—stole our win vs Slovenia. Detest that man. Let’s not forget Luis Hernandez of Mexico. Always struck me as a nasty player. Landon corroborated that sentiment. Edit: I see I was beat to the punch in bringing up El Pescadito Honorable Mention to Carlos Ruiz. Seemed like such a bastard to play against.
Was Luis Hernandez the one that kicked Lalas in the balls and does that make him a hero or villain? Other contenders - Leonardo, G Rossi, Paul Gardner, Jim Rome.
Holden was able to recover from Nigel De Jong's injury. It was the Jonny Evans injury that ended his career.
Fair point. In my memory, the de Jong tackle, and Stu’s long corresponding layoff, set up the career coffin nail that was the Evans-tackle injury. Between that and the tackle on Nagbe in MLS (and kung fu chest-kick against Xabi Alonso in the World Cup, as well as other non-USMNTers) he’s a leading villain in my book.
That was Ramon Ramirez. Mexico was ruthless in those days. Jim Rome is an excellent shout. Rossi, too, in his own way.
Dirty Sanchez Also thought of Rome. Paul Gardner shout made me chuckle. ummmm Berhalter or maybe Danielle Reyna
Too local to qualify probably, but there was once a show called the George Michael Sports Machine, where the host (no, not the guy from Wham) would slam soccer as unpopular and then go on to drool all over professional rodeo. One of the sweetest moments was when I noticed that his old neon sign logo is now in the Panic Room of the Men in Blazers.
Oh yeah,that asshole.They showed him on my local station Sunday nights (I think he was out of DC) and I started out liking him till he started shitting on soccer.
Imagine if Gardner tried his "Latinos are sun people, Europeans are mud people" shtick today. The 90s were wild.
He had a weekly column in Soccer America where his schtick was railing on every week about how Latin soccer is so beautiful and progressive and European soccer is so ugly It's been 25 years but I'll never forget a letter someone wrote in after Chicago won the double in 98 playing attractive (by MLS 1.0 standards) ball trolling Gardner by talking about how they were led by the creativity of their Latin players (Piotr Nowak, Roman Kosecki) offset by some eastern European hard men in defense (Diego Gutierrez, Chris Armas). I think the guy even made the Polish players' names sound Latin and vice versa.
It's weird how Rome used to eff with us constantly and then just fell of a cliff. Did he have a soccer loving kid or something?
Yes, that was his son. And I'm pretty sure his whole soccer-hating thing was a put-on in the first place. But we'll always have Jim Everett As for villians: - Torsten Frings: That was a handball - Peter Prendergast: That WASN'T a handball. - Korman Coulibaly: How do you miss THAT call? - Rafa Marquez: 'nuff said. We need an unsung heroes thread as well. For mine eyes have seen the glory, too.
So Jim Rome was actually in on the plot to make US Soccer the laughing stock of THE ENTIRE WORLD? I was right all along!!!- Oliver Tse.
Rossi's a weird one, but completely accurate. He's not one of these dual-nationals that played for us and then switched. He never played for us on any level. But for some reason enormous vitriol was directed at him that actual switchers haven't experienced. You'd think guys like Araujo, Gonzalez, Vargas, etc. would be cast more as villains. They say their "heart was with Mexico." Well, then why were you wasting our time and resources? Even Subotic isn't cast as much of a villain as Rossi. And Subotic has admitted that he only "used" the USSF to get noticed by Bundesliga clubs. Paul Gardner is a good one for those of us from a certain generation. :