He didnÆt play a single game for his club team, Bayer Leverkusen, in the 2001-2002 season, but Frankie Hejduk made the U.S. World Cup squad. He followed up with a surprise start at left back — replacing the regular at that position, David Regis — and provided a creditable performance against Portugal.
Frankie Hejduk, U.S. defender
On his new role as a left back for the team: ''First of all, just being solid defensively as a team has been our main goal from the start, and taking it from there going forward. In terms of being a left back, my main responsibility has been defensively, and all I have to worry about right now is keeping sharp defensively, and if we get a chance to go forward, I have [DaMarcus] Beasley in front of me.'' On whether this is the first time he has played left back in his life: ''It wasn't the first time I'd played there in my life. But I haven't played there too often. But, being back there feels fine, like I said, it's not too much different on the right side. ''Your first responsibility is playing defense and defending your man and making sure he doesn't score or he doesn't get any crosses in. So, pretty much that's the same on the right side. Just the difference is, you've got to be prepared to play with your left foot a little bit more. And in training, I've been working on that at every training. ''Bruce has wanted me to hit crosses, to make some passes with my left foot, which isn't too much of a problem for me, so it's really not too much of a difference. In terms of maybe going forward a little bit, it's a bit different looking at the field, but in terms of playing it's not so different. ''And like I said, I've got a great player, [DaMarcus] Beasley, in front of me and we've got some great left-sided players on our team to give the ball to and make sure they can do the offense.'' On holding his own against the likes of Luis Figo and Sergio Conceicao against Portugal, and whether that gives him confidence looking forward to the rest of the tournament: ''Yeah, whenever you play against arguably two of the best players in the world, and you hold them to a certain extent, you feel proud of yourself after the game but, at the same time, that's what you're supposed to do, that's your job. ''Yeah, they're great players, but when you step on the field, you believe you're a good player also. So, we welcome the challenge, and I think myself and Tony [Sanneh] and the whole defense and the whole team for that matter, stepped up to playing against such a major soccer power and it just kind of showed the world that, hey, we can play too.'' On the response from the players on the great win against Portugal: ''Mainly now we're just thinking about the game against South Korea. After the game, for a short time, we congratulated each other, but that was just that night, and it was just one game and now we've got to concentrate on the next one. ''That game's behind us, we got what we wanted out of it, which was three points, and now you move on to the next game. We're not dwelling too much on the last game, now we're just trying to just get physically and mentally prepared for the game against Korea.''
