| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Karl |
Posted - Oct 08 2003 : 08:14:08 AM
Scaly, cant stay.
Really Great Damani Ralph Article
Wednesday, October 08, 2003, 6:04:03 AM
IP:63.65.169.39
Fire's Ralph a one-man wrecking crew
Posted: Tuesday October 7, 2003 1:12PM; Updated: Tuesday October 7, 2003 1:12PM
By Ridge Mahoney, Soccer America
It took a little prodding from the coach's son, but the Chicago Fire had the steal of the 2003 MLS SuperDraft, picking Damani Ralph with the 18th selection. The Jamaican forward has been firing fantastic goals during his rookie season, continuing a flair for spectacular finishing he honed in Mississippi and Connecticut.
Subscribe to Soccer America Magazine, the biweekly bible of soccer fans!
Get hot news, scores and fan-chat at SoccerAmerica.com
DON'T BE CONFUSED ABOUT DAMANI RALPH; the sequence of names is correct as presented, but if you got them mixed up, you wouldn't be the first one.
'All the time, all the time,' he laughs when asked if people assume his first name is Ralph. 'They don't call me Mr. Damani, but I do have to explain to them that's my first name and Ralph is my last name.'
That's the name in the record books, the young man who topped the previous, and modest, rookie MLS record of eight goals. Yet most of those goals have been anything but modest.
On the field, it's Chicago Fire opponents who've been left confused and dazed and bewildered. The goals have been hit from distance, with either foot, first-time, and off the dribble.
He scored a last-minute equalizer against Columbus with an insidious flick and pulverizing left-footed shot on the turn. He burned the Metros with a dribble that started near the touchline at midfield and ended with a right-footed blast from just beyond the penalty arc.
'It's hard to say,' Ralph muses of what inspires him to try the outrageous and more than occasionally pull it off. 'I just think it's something I've been doing since I was young and it comes natural.
'I watched Careca a lot. Brazil was one of my favorite teams and they still are. I was very influenced by the Brazilian style of soccer and I tried to mimic their way of playing.
'Something happens that makes me score these spectacular goals. It's the confidence of believing I can do it and taking the risk of trying.'
He took the risk of leaving the laid-back Caribbean and living in the Deep South, where his goals and audacity led him to the University of Connecticut, and thence to MLS, thanks in part to an enthusiastic scouting report from the son of a league coach.
'Damani was a great player,' says Steve Clements, his first mentor in America at Meridian (Miss.) Community College. 'He's always had the one thing going that every coach in the world wants, and that is, he can score goals. The guy can finish.'
A ROOKIE'S LIFE. So how has the highest-scoring rookie in the history of Major League Soccer been living the high life the past few months?
His car has broken down twice, so he borrows vehicles and bums rides. In his apartment is stuff belonging to his former roommate, a former teammate who was traded a month ago but has yet to return either to the apartment or the United States.
The MLS minimum salary ($24,000 plus bonuses) doesn't go far in the Windy City, so he sometimes dines at the home of his agent, Patrick McCabe, whose car has also been borrowed a few times.
On the other hand, Ralph has found a place on the south side of Chicago that serves up a mean jerk chicken and other Jamaican fare, which gives him a whiff of the homeland he left to attend school and take a stab at life in the USA.
'My coach asked me if I wanted to go to America and play soccer and get a degree in education and I said fine,' says Ralph, who grew up in Kingston and attended the same high school, St. George's College, as Fire teammate Andy Williams and many other Jamaicans who moved to the United States to play soccer. 'At that time, in Jamaica, there was really nothing else but probably playing, and this was an opportunity I might never have again, so I took it.'
Through contacts in Jamaica, one of which was former international Barrington Gaynor, Clements brought a steady stream of players to MCC, including a national junior college player of the year, Andrew McLeod, who joined Ralph at UConn in 2001.
'We've had a bunch of them, and we've had some really good ones in there,' says Clements, who has moved to Tyler Junior College in Tyler, Texas. 'They will never give you a problem off the field, and they'll never give you a problem in the classroom. Their issues are getting along with people, which Andrew and Damani did a great job of. They were two of the more sociable kids we had.'
Ralph says he wasn't fazed by life in Mississippi.
'At the beginning, it felt strange, because you're going to hear stories that it's very racist in Mississippi, but once I got there and settled in, it was definitely the opposite,' says Ralph. 'I never received any racist comments or discrimination to me and my friends. They were friendly to us.'
Ralph scored 22 goals in 1999 and 38 in 2000, leading MCC to the NJCAA finals his second year.
'We have a couple on video that would just shock you,' says Clements. 'He's always been able to do some amazing things. I could go on all day talking about Damani's goals. Of course, I saw 60 of them.' (He only hit 22 his first season.)
Clements also saw Ralph mature into a tougher specimen, better suited to standing up to the rigors of Division I ball and perhaps, someday, the pro game.
'I can remember in the national championship game in 2000 he had a pulled quad out on the field,' says Clements. 'He was digging a ditch as he's running that day, dragging his foot behind him. I'm trying to pull him out and he's saying, 'No, coach, no, coach, I'm staying in.''
COLLEGE SPECTACLE. Coach Ray Reid saw enough goals and determination to bring Ralph to UConn, where the spectacle continued. In two seasons, he hit 28 goals.
'Of the 18 he scored for us last year, 13 were like the goals he's scored in MLS,' says Reid. 'I'm telling ya, he's scored goals that you wouldn't believe.'
One by one, Reid rattles them off:
'He scored a great one against Washington, where a ball got played in the box and he kind of flipped it over a guy and volleyed it into the side 90. It was an awful angle.
'He scored one against Penn, in the first game of the NCAA tournament, a 30-yarder, a missile like a foot off the ground, into the side netting. A great goal.
'Against Rutgers, he was about 18 yards out, and he kind of side-volleyed it over the keeper's head. He was a one-man wrecking crew.'
Every MLS team, including the Crew, passed on Ralph in the 2003 SuperDraft. Chicago took him with the 18th pick after taking forward Nate Jaqua in the first round.
Ralph doesn't have a green card and in two years will count as a senior international, which may have dissuaded teams from picking him. His showing at the MLS player combine wasn't impressive.
Fire coach Dave Sarachan attended a UConn game last fall at Maryland accompanied by his son Ian. Huskie defender Shavar Thomas, another Jamaican, had drawn the elder Sarachan's interest, but Ian, a forward in his own right, had his eye elsewhere.
'He really did keep saying, 'Dad, I really like this Damani,' says Sarachan. 'He's been kidding me about it for months. He goes, 'Dad, I told you.' Damani is a hard-working kid, he doesn't dog it in training. He's a good person and he's pretty humble. The guys like him a lot in the locker room.'
Rodrigo Faria had been penciled in to play up front alongside Ante Razov, but Faria's long stays in Brazil due to the illness and death of his father opened up a spot.
'I wouldn't say Damani is the absolute prototype of what we would looking for,' says Sarachan. 'We were looking for a different dimension than Ante [Razov], whether it was a small, crafty guy or a big, tall target, we weren't sure.
'He reminds me in some ways of Stern John from the standpoint that he's a big, strong guy. It's too early to say if Damani is going to be consistent like this every year, but I think there's quite a lot of similarities there. He's maybe a bit more athletic than Stern. He's got like four percent body fat.'
Ralph says he's adjusted to life in Chicago, although he plans to miss as much of the harsh winter weather as he can. That stuff in his apartment belongs to Faria, who tied the rookie scoring mark for the Metros in 2001 and was traded to the Fire, which has traded his rights to San Jose.
Ralph has played one game for Jamaica, a friendly in 2002 against Grenada. Regular phone calls to his family in Kingston, hanging with Williams, and daily chats with Thomas, who has won a regular spot with the Burn, keep the home fires burning.
FATHER'S ADVICE. 'We had a nice bond when we were in college,' says Ralph of Thomas. 'We lived together. We played against each other in high school. He's like a brother to me.'
Ralph has three brothers of his own. His older brother, Jerome White, and his father, Robert Ralph, played vital roles in his development. Those calls back home are not strictly social.
'I talk to my dad after every game because he's my analyst,' says Damani. 'He tells me what I need to work on. He doesn't sugar-coat it. He says I need to get hungry again. He says I'm taking breaks instead of working hard on and off the ball. He was a good player when he was younger and he has a very good knowledge of the game. It's always good when I speak with him. Sometimes as a player you take something for granted.'
Ridge Mahoney is a senior editor at Soccer America magazine. |
|
|
