Galaxy great Landon Donovan reveals his inner

You know Landon Donovan, proper?

Six-time MLS champion who retired as the league’s all-time top scorer and as U.S. Soccer’s all-time chief in objectives and assists? Played the most World Cup video games and scored the most World Cup objectives of any American?

Well, it’s possible you’ll know those numbers. But that doesn’t imply you already know the person.

I believed I did. I coated Donovan for a decade and a half. I shared airplanes and locker rooms with him, following him to South Africa and Mexico and practically a dozen states to watch him play before sharing numerous press bins with him when he grew to become a broadcaster.

Then I read his memoir, “Landon,” which was launched on Tuesday. Turns out I didn’t know him at all.

It’s not that Donovan essentially saved issues hidden. It’s that no one thought to ask the proper questions. We had been all in the objectives, the wins and the trophies and not the extraordinary price he had to pay to win those issues.

In the memoir, masterfully told by Southern California-based author and podcaster Ryan Berman, Donovan pulls no punches. He not only reveals the price of his fame and fortune, but he brings the receipts as properly.

“Otherwise, why do it?” Donovan said in a telephone interview. “I don’t need anything from it. I don’t need money. I don’t need attention. You want to share your story and you think it’s going to help people, do it.”

And Donovan has a lot to share. So while soccer is a component of the guide’s narrative, the memoir is as a lot about the game as “To eliminate a Mockingbird” is about avian murder.

Instead, Donovan goes deep into his battles with depression and his embrace of therapy to handle his mental health, points that had been already well-known and predate the tales of Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Noah Lyles and Kevin Love. In fact, Donovan’s braveness in confronting the stigma of mental health in skilled sports activities doubtless made the journey simpler for those who adopted.

It definitely educated Bruce Arena, the Hall of Fame supervisor who gave Donovan his first cap with the national workforce (Donovan scored the opening objective in a 2-0 win over Mexico) and coached him through two World Cups and to three MLS titles with the Galaxy.

“Professional athletes are like anybody else,” he said. “Sometimes we think professional athletes are just very tough people and have no weaknesses. But they’re sensitive and deal with issues that everybody deals with.”

There had been three major bouts with depression in Donovan’s profession, the most notorious being the five-month sabbatical from soccer in the winter of 2013, a much-needed mind-clearing that value him the captain’s armband with the Galaxy and a spot on the 2014 U.S. World Cup workforce. (He still hasn’t forgiven Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach who cut him.)

That hiatus ended with a horrifying hallucinogenic nightmare that you’ll have to read the guide to be taught about.

An equally horrifying story that’s not in the guide includes a two-week stretch in his MLS profession during which Donovan was so wracked by depression he couldn’t get off the sofa.

“My mom came, my sister came and my brother flew in from DC and they just sat with me,” Donovan said. “I didn’t eat. I would sleep maybe an hour a day. And I had to get up and go train.”

There was no method he might play a recreation but he received little sympathy from Arena or the Galaxy teaching workers so Donovan’s therapist told him to pick a baby in the group during warmups and play for that baby as if he had been a younger Landon Donovan.

“And that’s exactly what I did. The whole game is a fog. I can’t remember it at all but I just got through it,” he said.

In the memoir, Donovan confronts the origins of his mental health points, talks about growing up poor in a 900-square-foot home managed heroically by his single mom, Donna, and how even his biggest successes on the sphere left him unfulfilled. But mainly his writes about his father, Tim, a one-time semi-pro hockey participant from Canada who largely deserted Landon and his twin sister, Tristan, as they had been growing up.

What the guide is just not is a recitation of big video games and important objectives.

“I get bored reading sports memoirs and biographies. It’s a timeline of events and it’s kind of like ‘OK, I watched that. I know that happened,’” Donovan said. “I didn’t want it to be like that.

“Being a single mom, growing up really poor is a common story in this country. Having a father who’s not around is a very common story. Dealing with depression is really common. So there’s lot of things in the book that people can take away.”

Donovan, 44, performed 15 seasons with the Galaxy and San José Earthquakes, arguably saving MLS by returning from an unsuccessful stint in Germany at a time when the league was in hazard of going bankrupt. He retired and un-retired a number of instances, enjoying his remaining out of doors recreation with Leon of Mexico’s Liga MX in 2018 before making 10 appearances with the San Diego Sockers of the Major Arena Soccer League in 2019. He then went into teaching with the San Diego Loyal of the second-tier USL Championship and the San Diego Wave of the NWSL and into broadcasting with Fox.

Since his first retirement, he’s also gotten married and had three youngsters.

Landon Donovan celebrates after the Galaxy defeat the New England Revolution to win the 2014 MLS Cup title.

(Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m not bored,” he said. “I’m looking for my next passion. And what I’ve done over the last few years is make peace with not having to find that next passion. My wife has helped me a lot with that.”

But it’s the troubled relationship with his father that has fueled most every little thing in Donovan’s life, including both his depression and his success. It also evokes the rawest and most emotional passages in the guide.

“The part with my dad that was hard was sending him the book in August and saying ‘Dad, this is going to be really painful. I need you to read it’,” Donovan said.

He did and barely modified a phrase. Then 4 months later Tim Donovan died, his relationship with his son finally at peace.

“If one — literally one — person reads this book and picks up the phone and calls their dad and wants to reconcile, then the whole thing was worth it,” Landon Donovan said.

Consider that the most important objective in his profession.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a highlight on distinctive tales. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.