U.S. caps leader Marcelo Balboa is hoping for a better second season in MLS.
Weaned on warmth and raised on sunshine, the Southern Californian stares at the flakes streaking his living room window as a gentle snowfall decorates the trees and mountains in the distance.
Two Labrador retrievers — one black, one white — demand his attention. A fire blazes in the hearth. His wife is somewhere else in the house they currently rent, for they are unsure if the roots they’ve planted in central Colorado should grow deep into the now-frozen ground.
They were married last summer, about a month before he suffered the second serious injury of his career. Upon awakening and getting out of bed, he crashed to the floor, felled by a stabbing pain in his heel.
Recovery and rehabilitation required more than five months. His previous injury, a torn anterior cruciate ligament, needed nearly eight months to heal.
Despite losing more than a year from his national team career, defender Marcelo Balboa and his record of international appearances are poised to pull away from the pack. In the snowy setting of a Westminster winter, Balboa has enough time to ponder many of life’s mysteries, one of which is, “How the hell did I get to 115 caps?”
Only one other player, Paul Caligiuri, has topped 100, and a poor showing during CONCACAF World Cup qualifying last fall may have halted his run at 113 appearances.
Balboa knows some of the answers. He came along at a time when U.S. Soccer ensconced its national team in a full-time training camp and played dozens of friendlies per year, so the caps added up fast. He started his international career as several incumbent players, plagued by shallow reserves of experience, ability and speed, approached the end of their careers. He benefited from a coach, Bora Milutinovic, with whom he shared a common language and who appointed him team captain.
Yet as Balboa points out, there’s no such thing as tenure for most national team players. The right to stay is earned, not granted, as many of the younger U.S. players discovered during U.S. Cup and two-game trip to China.
“In order to play at this level, you’ve got to take it two or three levels above MLS,” says Balboa, among a slew of Colorado players sidelined last summer as the Rapids struggled to the worst record in the league. “And now a lot of the younger players have seen that during qualifying and this year.
“They realize it’s a lot tougher to get on the national team than you think.”
Teammate Eric Wynalda, who also returned to national team action in China, concurs. “You wouldn’t believe some of these young guys,” says Wynalda. “A guy like Marcelo has been around for years, but these guys, they have a few good games in MLS and get called in, and they’re all upset when they don’t play.”
The China tour marked Balboa’s return to the national team after a lengthy absence due to a chronic case of plantar fasciatis, which followed several months battling a hamstring pull.
His error early in the first game helped China to its first goal in a 2-1 defeat, but he played a solid 90 minutes in the second match that caught U.S. head coach Steve Sampson somewhat by surprise.
“Honestly, after the first game, I was thinking the best thing for Marcelo would be go get his fitness and confidence back playing for Colorado,” says Sampson. “I didn’t have any plans to bring him in for the first few qualifying games.
“But that second game convinced me otherwise. He played very well, and definitely put himself back in the picture for the national team.”
Coming back from injury — again
Balboa had been through this before. In April ’93, in the second minute of a friendly against Iceland in Southern California, his right knee buckled with nobody within five yards of him. He simply stepped in the wrong manner in the wrong spot on a bad field, and suffered a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament.
“In ’93, I knew what the injury was,” says Balboa of working six or seven hours a day to rehabilitate. “I knew how long it was going to take for me to get back. It all depended on me: How fast I could build the muscle up and how hard I wanted to work.”
He made it back before the end of the year, and regained his starting spot in plenty of time for World Cup ’94, in which he played every minute.
Last year, he made appearances in all four U.S. games at the Gold Cup and three games at U.S. Cup ’96, sandwiched around the hamstring pull. He was married in July, two days before playing in the MLS All-Star Game on the soon-to-be-torn-up grass of Giants Stadium.
At the time, the Rapids were 8-9 and playing an ugly long-ball style that was garnering points but not many fans. He was also playing midfield in a system that stipulated as little action in that part of the field as possible.
“The system we played I wasn’t a big fan of,” says Balboa. “I was just chasing everything. But it was effective to a point.”
Injuries quickly whittled down the Colorado roster, and Balboa joined the inactive list in early August. After a 2-0 loss to New England, he missed the rest of the season as Colorado staggered to a record of 11-21.
“I was feeling good, but when we went to play in Boston, I felt a little pinch, a little tear on the bottom of my foot,” he recalls. “We came home, and I went to bed.
“When I woke up the next morning, and went to plant my foot, I fell to the ground. It felt like somebody had stuck a needle or a knife right in the bottom of my heel. I’ve never felt pain like that.
“I sat around for three months and waited for the pain to go away. It didn’t go away.”
His absence hurt the team on the field and at the gate. The Rapids’ management had interpreted his “marquee player” designation literally by commissioning a 30-by-60-foot banner of Balboa to be festooned on downtown Denver buildings.
The banner’s prominence belied that of its subject. Balboa, the only current U.S. international on the Rapids roster, played just 18 of 32 MLS games.
Says Rapids ex-teammate Dominic Kinnear, who also played with Balboa on the national team during the Bora era, “He tried his best to get healthy, and no matter what he did, the pain just wouldn’t go away.”
U.S. national team doctor Bert Mandelbaum examined Balboa and sent him to therapist Steve Thomas, who recommended a massage therapist. Within two weeks, says Balboa, most of the pain had been relieved and he began rehabilitation.
By this time, World Cup qualifying had already commenced, and although Balboa was called into training camp, his lack of fitness precluded any chance of him playing. The U.S. defense creaked at times, but it conceded only three goals in the first five qualifiers while clinching passage to the next round.
A noticeable shortage of speed hampered the U.S. backline throughout the qualifying phase that was particularly glaring in the matches without Eddie Pope. A nice turn of foot has always been one of Balboa’s attributes, but he wasn’t showing much during training sessions.
He also rode the bench during U.S. Cup ’97, and nearly didn’t make the China roster, but a late change — Balboa insists he did not lobby to be placed on the team — added him to the squad.
“Some people were thinking I was over the hill, even though I’m only 29,” he said. “There were reports here, reports there that maybe I wouldn’t be able to get back in form like in ’94 and ’95.
“That wasn’t a concern to me; I just knew I had to get healthy. I knew once I started playing I could get back to where I was before.
“I had two games to show what I could do. The first game I played okay, nothing great, I got through it. But the second game I felt good, a lot like the old Marcelo.”
Sampson has said he’ll bring Balboa into camp for the March 2 qualifier against Jamaica. The U.S. team isn’t alone in anxiously awaiting “the old Marcelo.”
A new day in Denver?
Colorado’s new head coach Glenn Myernick has promised to instill a new style of play, and the team also has a new general manager in Dan Counce, and several new players. Playing mostly in midfield last year, Balboa scored seven goals and recorded two assists.
Says Balboa, “The first two or three games [last year] in Denver, the fans were pumped up. But it’s like any sport; if you don’t win, it’s tough to get people out. We made a lot of mistakes in Denver, and it was very frustrating.”
Balboa joined the Rapids after playing more than a year with Leon in the Mexican League, where crowds of 35,000 fans waving white-and-green flags would pack its stadium for big matches. His first home goal for Leon triggered a 3-2 win over archrival Pumas; he reached an inswinging corner kick an instant before the goalkeeper, and flicked the ball into the net.
“I still think the Mexican League is a little bit above MLS,” he says. “It’s tough to compare, because that league has been established for years. Any team in MLS could give some teams in Mexico a good run.”
A good run with the national team is his immediate objective, now that he’s overcome the latest setback and has set his sights on at least three or four more years wearing U.S. colors.
“The hardest part isn’t getting there, it’s staying there,” says Balboa. “You can always get a chance with the national team. For me, after the Under-20 World Cup [in 1987] I got an invitation. I was in and out of the team a few times before I got called in consistently.
“For me, I fought to get back onto the 22, to get called in for the March 2 game. That was the first step. Now, my second step is to fight to get back into the starting 11. That’s something I have to do.”
He’s also hoping he can adjust to winter weather that’s much different than he’s used to. “I played in Colorado before [in the APSL], but that was always in the summer,” says Balboa. “This is the first winter I’ve ever gone through, and if I can make it through this one, I’ll be all right.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney.
(Note: this story originally appeared in the Feb. 24, 1997 issue of SA.)