It’s all there in the celebration. Quick, contained, precise; just like the man. Brian McBride kisses his wedding ring, raises his left hand to recognise the crowd; crosses himself with his right hand, and runs to his team-mates.
A large part of the striker’s life is dedicated to producing those post-goal moments and the best part of it is captured in them. Family and faith. Ask McBride if those regular salutes represent the most important aspects of his life and he modestly accepts. “Probably,” says McBride. “That’s probably right.”
The polite reticence is typical. McBride is one of the most popular and successful footballers the United States has produced – a central figure in three World Cup campaigns, goalscorer in two, so lauded in the city of Columbus that his then place of employment honoured him with a ‘Brian McBride Day’ a few years back and tried to tempt him back to Major League Soccer this. Yet ask about McBride’s hero status in the States, and the reply is swiftly self-deprecating. “Well if that’s true, that’s great,” he says. “I’m sure there’s probably just as many people who don’t like me.”
Not at Fulham, where’re they just fought off the Columbus Crew and Chicago Fire to sign McBride to another season of contract. Where team-mates and Manager alike benefit from the centre forward’s unrelenting professionalism.
“He’s perfect, fantastic, a team player,” says Chris Coleman. “He looks after himself, when he’s not at the training ground he gets lots of rest, he rarely misses games, rarely gets injured. You always know what you’re going to get from him.
“If you look at it pound for pound, you can’t buy anybody who can attack a ball like he does, scores goals like he does, for 700 grand. We sold Louis Saha in the January in which we got him and for the amount of money we spent and the service he’s given us he’s got to be the best signing of any we’ve done.”
An athletic, intelligent and resolutely brave presence, McBride rises with defenders to gather in or knock down the long ball, then powers through or deftly evades them to convert the cross.
He is economical and selfless with possession in the build-up, yet takes the right decision about when to shoot and rarely misses the target when he does. It’s an enviable skill set, yet one that emerged from great effort and self-reflection.
McBride interviews are rare given the 13-season length of his professional career, but when he does speak there is often talk about maximising potential, or being aware of weaknesses – he cites running past an opponent as one - and concentrating on other skills.
"If you don’t take the hits you are showing a lack of respect to your team-mates and, for a large part, the game itself."
Brian McBride
“That’s fair,” acknowledges McBride ahead of a Motspur Park training session. “I think as you get further and further involved in whatever sport you’re playing - being the way that sport is now going faster and quicker and stronger - you have to always have to adapt and adjust your game. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder, but I think you always have to think about it. If you don’t a game can pass you by.”
Ask how much McBride has changed since his days as a collegiate soccer player at St Louis University, and the 34-year-old is amused by the very idea he might not have. “Gosh. I think I change every year, I adapt. Hopefully I feel like I learn something and try to adapt. I think a lot of guys will tell you that it depends on the shape, depends on who else is out on the field with you. You’ve got to have a good understanding of what’s needed and when that happens things tend to go better for you.”
Concentration on, and preparation for, training play a part, as does the careful rest and recuperation Coleman refers to. McBride puts much of his success as a Premier League striker down to pure “hard work”.
“You definitely have to try and understand the game,” he says. “Hard work means at training you have to be trying to adapt, to learn, to understand where your team-mates are going to normally get the ball, position-wise.
"Defensively, how you need to get yourself in the spots where you are going to help the team win the ball in better positions. Really you just need to try and make sure you do it in practice, then on the field it comes to you a lot easier than just trying to figure it out just in games.”
At odds with this super-serious professionalism are some of McBride’s public appearances Stateside. During his eight seasons at Columbus Crew, the forward moonlighted as a DJ on one of the local radio stations (“It lasted for maybe a couple of months. It was mostly alternative rock - Pearl Jam type stuff and that genre.”) He also boasts an appearance in Sports Illustrated’s 2003 Swimsuit Issue alongside wife Dina, who won’t allow FulTime to reprint their shots here. “She’ll kill us. She looks amazing and I tell her she looks amazing, but I think she would probably rather not.”
Then there is his reputation as an extreme-sports fanatic. Scan through a few online profiles and you’ll find mention of McBride sky diving on ESPN and running with the bulls in Pamplona. It’s slightly deceptive.
“People are making stuff up now, I’ve never run with the bulls,” he protests. “And the funny thing about the sky diving is that when MLS started they handed out these bio sheets in which you were supposed to fill out what you enjoy doing, birth date, family members and all that stuff.
“I handed it back in, but one of the guys got hold of it and added ‘sky diving’. When the PR press pack came out my bio said ‘Hobbies: sky diving’. I was dying laughing. To this day, I have no idea who did it, but one of the guys was definitely having a little fun.
“About a month and a half later I got a phone call from ESPN: ‘We heard you love to sky dive, we want to film you doing it.’ I’m like ‘I hate to burst your bubble but I’ve never done it in my life. But I’ll do it if you want to.’ A lot of things happened after that, but I did it, I enjoyed it, and if I got a chance in the future might think about it again.”
It is no surprise that McBride felt calm about putting his body on the line. He laughs then turns serious when it is suggested he plays football like an adventure sport at times, keen to play down a catalogue of injuries sufficient to fill an episode of ER.
“A few whacks, I think. My heads taken it’s fair share of stitches and a few odds and ends of other things. But I think that’s probably happened to a lot of players who are centre forwards or centre halves. It’s part of the job. I think if you start shying away from it, it’s going to affect the way you play. If you don’t take the hits you are showing a lack of respect to your team-mates and, for a large part, the game itself.”
He has shown a new face worth’s of respect - his skull reinforced with six titanium plates after both cheekbones fell victim to defenders’ elbows or heads.
“I’ve got three on the right, three on the left,” he says curtly, before being forced into detail. “I did my left side first, and that was shattered. I headed the ball; he headed my orbital and cheekbone. My doctor did a great job putting it altogether.
“The next one was sort of a fluke thing where I came across a guy to flick on a ball, he was going up jumping and caught me with an elbow. It was like five clean breaks on the right side. They’re little bones. That was a little easier, plus Dr Treece had done my other side so he could match it up.”
There was also the orbital bone broken in a Gold Cup match with Brazil - and the queasy feeling of an eyeball exiting its socket.
“It was at the Orange Bowl in Miami and we were at the end where the locker rooms are so I got right up and jogged to them,” he recalls. “The trainer is looking at me and things seemed all right, it doesn’t hurt. The assistant coach comes in five minutes after I’ve left the field and he’s like ‘Listen, I need to know if you can come back on and play’. I looked at him and said, ‘Yeah, I think I can’. And then I coughed and my eyeball went, wooop, right in and out. It didn’t come out-out, but I felt it, and I’m like, ‘Oh boy, I don’t think I should be going back out there.’ Next day X-rays showed it had broke. But it was funny.”
Shattered face bones, though, were not the most serious of McBride’s football wounds. That came from what appeared to be little more than a badly bruised arm suffered during his second match in England, a League Cup tie with Coventry in September 2000.
“I was on loan at Preston and I took a pretty good elbow in the arm in a night game, didn’t think very much of it. We were at Sheffield Wednesday at the weekend, played a game, came in afterwards, took my shirt off, and my right arm was twice the size of my left arm. I hadn’t noticed but the other guys said, ‘Woah, look at your arm’.
“That day they took me to the hospital, saw there was a clot, put me in a hospital bed pretty much straight away.
"I was on the phone back to the States and our doctor there, Dr Edwards, did a lot of research in a short period of time and told me I need to get on a plane, fly home, and get it out. That’s the first time – they were able to angioplasty it out.”
The pulmonary embolism had been caused by a genetic condition in which rib pressure on the thoracic vein produces occasional blood clots. Form one large enough and it can kill. In 2001 another clot developed and surgeons removed part of McBride’s first rib in an attempt to solve the condition. Complications forced them to insert a chest tube in one of McBride’s lungs and leave him on an IV drip for 10 days.
“I was lifting weights and my trainer saw it and said, ‘Your arm’s swollen again’. I said, ‘Ok, we need to go’. Went to the hospital, they said I’d got a clot and they tried to angioplasty it again, but this time it wouldn’t come out. So went to a few different specialists, both of whom were in agreement that I needed to have surgery and that entailed taking part of my first rib out, trying to get the clot out of there. That was not a fun time.
“But you know, things happen for a reason. I met my wife during that first period. So it was not a great injury, but it turned out to be pretty darned good; pretty awesome to be able to take a period where I’m not supposed to be where I am and meet my wife.”
The story of how US soccer star Brian got together with reluctant swimsuit model Dina is both romantic and remarkable. The pair had know each other since childhood, Dina being a friend of McBride’s sister but only the coincidence of her return to Chicago for Thanksgiving and his for medical treatment provided the opportunity to fall for each other.
“Dina’s father was my Little League coach, he was also my mum’s insurance agent,” explains McBride. “Her mother at my high school, and Dina went to a high school just over from mine. We knew each other probably until she was around eight and I was around 11 and I knew her brothers, I played baseball with them.
“It was pretty crazy, just an amazing thing. We hadn’t seen each other for so long and then when we finally saw each other I was off injured and on anti-coagulant drugs, I couldn’t do anything really. So I had a month where we were together every second day. I’d go home at night then wake up in the morning and bring coffee and bagels over. During that whole period we got to spend almost every second of every day together. It was pretty amazing, pretty cool.”
Although it seems classic schoolgirl crush territory, Dina had never been interested in her pal’s elder brother. “No, no! We try and dig up Little League baseball pictures where we were sort of together back then because we used to do 4th of July parades and she’d ride on her dad’s float with me. We desperately tried to find them for our wedding, but we couldn’t come up with any.”
It is no coincidence that the most effective years of McBride’s career have come since marrying Dina. He describes Sundays without football as “special days”, an opportunity to enjoy watching daughters Ashley and Ella grow up and to give something back to those who support him.
“Family is the most important thing for me, and they’ve definitely helped drive me on over my career,” he says. “My wife is so supportive, which is a huge, huge thing for any player – to have that support regardless of whether you’re doing well or doing poorly. She’s always been there.
“I think we have a huge amount of respect for each and we have an even greater amount of love for each other, which makes something like this – being in a different country – a lot easier to deal with. Because we have each other and we have our girls. Ashley and Ella have adapted so well and they’re enjoying school and stuff, so it’s good.
“They’re dancers, they’re girly girls. But they have a great time when they go to games now because they both cheer and enjoy themselves. I guess they are a little bit football fans but give them chance to go out back and kick a soccer ball or go dance a little bit and be rock stars, they would pick the latter.”
McBride’s other pillar is his faith. “I have a strong belief in Christ and that’s something that’s been instilled in me, but not overly. My mom raised me that way but also let me find out about a lot of different things. She’s not pushy and I don’t think we’re an overly religious family, but we have strong beliefs. I think those beliefs turn into morals and into values and that’s important.”
The religious symbolism that follows a McBride goal is not the only element of his faith involved in match days.
“I say a quick prayer before games, try and just get out of a little bit. It’s usually when we come back in after warming up. Sometimes it will be so crazy when we’re getting ready to go out that I’ll have to do it on the field. But it’s just back to focusing on what’s important. The prayer does that.”
Typically, McBride’s decision to resist the lure of a reorganised MLS now allowed to recruit star players on uncapped salaries and extend his Fulham contract until 2008 was focused on his family.
“There was a lot of serious thought put in by my wife and I because originally we planned to be here for two and a half years and decided again for one year last year,” say McBride. “But it came down to us enjoying it here. Our girls love their school and they have a lot of good friends. So we made the decision to stay and we’re here. It was a big decision for us but we’re excited about it.”
Hanging on to their understated Statesman should excite Fulham too.
This article was taken from the latest edition of FulTime Magazine. To purchase a copy please visit the FFC Club Shop or why not make the most of our exclusive matchday offer.
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