Tiffeny Milbrett's singular approach to the game, and scoring goals, makes her the WUSA's – and the world's – top player. She might also be the most underappreciated.
Tiffeny Milbrett scored in bunches from the start, since she was 7 and finally old enough to sign up for youth soccer in Portland, Ore. It's what she did – she was a goal machine. That was her gift.
She's scored hundreds and hundreds of goals, in youth games and for Hillsboro High School, where she set an Oregon state record with 131; at the University of Portland, where she netted 103, an NCAA mark until Danielle Fotopoulos came along. She's the best bet to be next to hit 100 internationally – 13 more makes her the fifth in history and just the third American to reach the century mark.
Top scorer in the WUSA's first season? Milbrett, with 16 – 33 percent more than No. 2 – while carrying an often outmanned New York Power side to the semifinals and winning, most deservedly, MVP honors.
It's how she scores her goals, more than sheer numbers, that makes Milbrett, 29, the game's most dynamic player, that gives her the firmest claim to “best player in the world” – whatever that means – and that resonates quality which should have, by now, made her a star. She's a dazzling talent, a sparkplug striker with explosive speed, sublime touch, how'd-she-do-that maneuverability and an unerring knack for finding the net – from any angle, any opening, anywhere, anytime.
“It's like what Ronaldo had, and when you start comparing people to Ronaldo, you know it's something special,” WUSA Commissioner Tony DiCicco, the former U.S. women's national team coach, says when asked what separates Milbrett from other players. “Both have the ability … when they get into a certain gear, the world-class athletes on the field with them seem to be running in mud or sand. All of a sudden, they're by two or three people.”
“She knows what her job is,” says Power coach Patrick Farmer, “and she takes responsibility for scoring goals. A lot of people want to do that, but it's not easy. She's willing to take responsibility when she doesn't score; it doesn't cause her to miss next time.”
Scoring scads of goals has always been her objective – “I didn't want to score more goals than [someone else],” she says, “I wanted to score goals” – and nobody does it better, at least not over the past few years nor in the biggest games.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T. It's accorded her respect once slow in coming, but for all her skills and accomplishments, for all the acclaim she attracts from coaches and teammates and peers, she may be not only the world's best player, but its most underappreci-ated, too.
While Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Julie Foudy have become, primarily in the wake of the Americans' 1999 Women's World Cup triumph, media personalities and household names – chatting with Dave and Regis, trying not to be “The Weakest Link,” throwing in two cents' on “Nightline,” persuading you to buy this or that – Milbrett is, to those outside soccer's web (corporate America included), merely another of Mia's, Brandi's and Julie's faceless teammates.
” 'Underappreciated' may not be the right word,” says Sue Rodin, Milbrett's agent. “Maybe 'underendorsed,' at the moment. We're hoping to change that.”
Milbrett certainly has the on-field credentials, and on the sidelines she's a charming, intelligent, down-to-earth woman, possessing one of the more engaging personalities in a sport packed with personality. That's added up to only two endorsement agreements, with Nike and Soccer Pal (a training device). Her television presence is limited to soccer telecasts.
“My job,” Rodin says, “is to educate some non-endemic companies: Here's a woman who was MVP in the first year of the league, who in soccer circles is considered the best player in the world, who's great with kids, has a lot of energy, who has great speed and is a dynamic player. … And she's not cluttered – she's not a walking billboard.
“They need to understand this is someone on top of her game and that the Women's World Cup is next year: 'Pay attention, this is someone you really want to affiliate with.'
“It's Tiff Time! That's our mantra.”
Milbrett doesn't begrudge her teammates their off-field success and popularity. That doesn't mean she hasn't been envious.
“I think it's been a difficult journey – definitely a difficult journey,” says the 5-foot-2 forward, who debuted for the national team in 1991, when she was 18, but didn't begin making an impact until preparations for the 1995 Women's World Cup.
Since then, Milbrett has scored 83 goals in 156 international matches, including some of the most important in U.S. history. In '95, playing in injured Michelle Akers' place, she shared the team lead with three WWC goals. She netted the gold-winner at the '96 Olympics, then led the U.S. team with three goals in both the 1999 triumph and at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
“You give everything you have to the sport, give everything you have every time you step on the field,” she says, “and having given everything you have, the only thing you want is due respect.
“I'm not asking for one endorsement. I want, and have always wanted, to be respected. I'll tell you, I don't believe I've always gotten it, the respect. For whatever reason, it's taken its time, and it's been a long time.”
LATCHKEY CHILD. Milbrett, says April Heinrichs, the national team coach, “beats from a different drum,” and her teammates get a kick from it. “They tickle her, tease her, and they love that very different quality about Tiffeny.”
It's product of her environment growing up, as a latchkey child in a working-class, single-parent home.
“What makes me me,” Milbrett says, “is the life I've had. There were responsibilities I had to learn at an early age, and I became very independent. …
“I've always said I felt like an adult from age 4. That's when I [realized] I had only one parent. I knew what it meant; I knew it didn't mean a normal family. … I had to take care of myself.”
Milbrett “grew up on the sidelines” of her mother's softball and soccer games, inheriting her mom's love of sport and athletic prowess. Elsie Milbrett began playing soccer in her early 30s; she's primarily a forward, good enough to have competed in over-30 national competitions but with “probably not as much” mobility as her daughter.
“I've heard her father was quite an athlete as well,” Elsie says, “so I can't take all the credit.”
Milbrett's father has never been in her life, and he's resisted efforts forged by family friends to meet his daughter. Clive Charles, Milbrett's coach at the University of Portland, was the chief adult male figure in her life – “He was more than a father for me,” she says – and the primary influence upon her game.
“For Clive, the first thing is it's not about winning,” she says. “What it is is about the quality of being a human being. I think that's why people respect him.”
Milbrett's approach is similar.
“The reason I play,” she says, “is because it brings a lot of happiness, it calms me, it relaxes me. I feel at home on the soccer field. When you are in that state of emotion, it's … you don't want to be anywhere else. It's the ultimate state to be in. Being out there [on the field] puts me in it.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Scott French