The all-time U.S. leader in caps and assists still has much to attain. He is set to return to the World Cup for the third time and hopes to finally win an MLS championship.
A month off, an eternity by his standards, has revived and recharged Cobi Jones.
Left behind are the triumphs and disappointments of 2001, the sweet swings and bitter blows intrinsic to professional athletes.
The Galaxy won two trophies but was denied a chance to play in the Club World Championship and failed again in MLS Cup, this time most excruciatingly in sudden-death.
Jones appears set to return to the World Cup for the third time, but younger attackers emerged to threaten his spot on the U.S. depth chart.
“I think this year is going to be another high for me, a breakout year,” said Jones Jan. 4, the day he checked into the U.S. team hotel as it began preparations for the CONCACAF Gold Cup. “I’m a lot more mature and a lot more of a leader this year than any other year of my career.”
Jones may not be a starter. Coach Bruce Arena has a lot of options and may rely on Jones as a catalyst off the bench. The former UCLA star started five games in 2001, came off the bench in five others and didn’t play in the five others.
“I have to focus basically on being a winger,” said Jones, who will turn 32 two days after the U.S. concludes group play against Poland. “For Bruce, I’ve been a player who can play in different places if needed, and that’s good for me. But he wants me to go at players, get the ball across, get it in the box.”
THE LONG SEASONS. The Galaxy began and ended the year with titles: the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup in January and the U.S. Open Cup in October.
An arduous run of training, travel and games for Jones ended in early December with his return from South Korea, where the United States lost, 1-0, in Seogwipo.
For Jones, a luxurious, Korean island resort is yet another exotic locale to have been logged in the service of soccer. He has worn the U.S. colors in dozens of countries. The Seogwipo match was his 145th cap, tops on the all-time U.S. list, yet he has no guarantees of a starting spot.
“Given whatever role I’m in during games or in the World Cup, I’ll accept whatever Bruce wants to give me,” said Jones.
Jones didn’t register a point in 2001 after leading the team in goals with six the previous year when he played up top as well as in midfield.
“I’m pretty much a utility player who can play a lot of different positions,” he said. “It’s helped my career last this long, to play a lot of different positions and play them well.”
“I think this year is going to be another high for me, a breakout year. I’m a lot more mature and a lot more of a leader this year than any other year of my career.”
– Cobi Jones.
ASSIST LEADER. Jones leads all U.S. players in career assists with 21 and is tied for fifth in goals with 14. Yet qualification for 2002 has done little to erase the memories of France ’98.
Whatever cohesion and continuity the team had forged in the months leading up to the 1998 World Cup fell to pieces during those three games in France. Jones, Claudio Reyna and David Regis were the only Americans to play all 270 minutes.
“Players were upset and rightly so,” says Jones. “They were out of the lineup right out of the blue. It was strange that you’d make switches like that right before the first game and then again. It was a little bit crazy and tough for me to understand, but Steve [Sampson] was the coach at the time, and he had to do what he thought was right. It was especially upsetting since we had done well in ’94.”
Jones is confident those setbacks will be avoided in 2002, but the buildup can’t begin early enough.
“As you get closer to the World Cup, any player will tell you, the intensity is going to pick up,” he says. “That’s what the players, especially the veterans, have to bring out.”
DIFFERENT ROLES. Once the pint-sized, dreadlocked curiosity of American soccer seemingly more suited to MTV than MLS, Jones is the sixth all-time leading scorer (54 goals and 50 assists for 158 points) in MLS history and one of only three players to rank in the top 10 in both goals and assists.
In the last four seasons, he’s led Los Angeles in scoring, including 1998 when the Galaxy racked up a league-record 85 goals. Jones had 19 and added 13 assists.
But the Galaxy faltered that year. Expansion Chicago knocked it out of the playoffs, and it was the Fire that paraded around MLS Cup at the Rose Bowl, the Galaxy’s home turf.
Jones also has three MLS Cup failures to dwell on. Sudden-death goals aborted the Galaxy’s quests in 1996 and 2001, and D.C. United shut it out in 1999.
“The finals with the Galaxy are some serious lows,” he says. “You need to bounce back and push through it. But the low points are tough. You work for that all season. If you lose before that … it’s just not the same if you lose in the final, especially it being the third time [in 2001].”
MORE RESPONSIBILITY. Galaxy coach Sigi Schmid installed Jones as his captain last year and plans to retain that designation in 2002.
“He’s always been someone who led more by what he did on the field than by shouting at people,” said Schmid, who coached Jones at UCLA before both moved to the Galaxy. “He’s always been competitive and wants to win every drill in every session. He’s been with the team since Day One, and I thought it would help him as well as the team to have that responsibility.”
Jones says whether or not he starts for the United States, he’ll speak his mind if he sees the need.
He lists reading fantasy books (authors Richard Jordan and George L. Martin) and playing video games as his hobbies, but he’s recently taken up golf, which more than few teammates play avidly.
“Some of the guys on the national team have been trying to get me for years to play golf,” he says. “I played once or twice but never really got into it. As of late, I’ve played a couple of times and got a little bit of a hankering for it.”
NEW GALAXY ROLE? Jones can’t avoid criticism he’s first and foremost a speed merchant, prone to fluffed first touches and inconsistent crosses. These perceived flaws are sometimes masked in MLS but can be glaring on the national team.
Schmid may move him into more of a midfield role after using him mostly as a winger in 2001.
For Arena?
“Bruce likes to change his lineups so at any point you could be in the starting lineup or you could be out,” said Jones, who has played in all seven U.S. games in the last two World Cups.
“He’s told us that it’s not necessarily the best players going at every position. You need the best team out on the field, the best group that meshes together, a group that will work together and win games together.”
“We have to raise our game beyond anything else. Qualifiers are big-time games, but they’re still not a World Cup match. There’s nothing like that.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney