Italy's Improbable Soccer Hero -- Alexi Lalas Sticks Out Like A Red Ponytail

PADUA, Italy - History loped onto the field here late last Sunday afternoon, entering a newly finished stadium in a crisp white uniform and curly red ponytail. The most improbable hero in Italian soccer was suddenly a long way from Detroit.

Everything Alexi Lalas does at this point makes history, as the first U.S.-born player ever to take the field in the 94 years of Italian Serie A, considered the world's best professional soccer league.

Of all the players bred in the United States, Lalas may be the most unlikely candidate to be playing in Italy. But after laboring in the safe cocoon of indifference that is soccer in the United States, the 24-year-old central defender has been heaved into a whirlwind, thanks to his unexpected stellar performance on the U.S. team in the World Cup.

In the accelerating bandwagon of publicity - which emphasized his soccer-rocker musician image, the player with the cascading red hair and Uncle Sam goatee - Lalas' soccer skills were obscured. The fact that he played every minute during the U.S. team's World Cup campaign was obliterated. American sports fans could not tell you what position Lalas played but knew the name of his rock band and the title of his new compact disc.

Enjoying the ride

The iconoclastic Lalas seems to have found a cosmic twin in Padua - a sad-sack team that, with some luck and great effort, raised itself from the B league to Serie A this season. Ecstatic fans were delirious with the promotion and they flocked by the thousands last Sunday to see the just-opened Stadio Euganeo, where Padua lost for the second time in as many game this season. Seemingly destined for the bottom of the league standings, few among even the most ardent fans expect the club to remain in Serie A.

But everyone, including Lalas, is enjoying the ride and the fans are soft on the team that has brought world-class soccer to this university town 30 miles west of Venice. Fans remain proud and enthusiastic, united by their infatuation for the team's first foreign player, the tall young American with the red hair.

Lalas' first week in professional soccer went like this: A 5-0 drubbing by Sampdoria in Padua's season opener Sept. 4. With the U.S. team three days later, a 2-0 loss to England at Wembley Stadium. Last Sunday, a 3-0 loss to Parma in Padua's first game in its new stadium.

English reporters, in particular, have been lying in wait for Lalas since the World Cup.

An ugly debate rages as two U.S. players wait for work permits to play in the English leagues. Several are already playing in England, barely tolerated, and there is a sense of impending invasion of "the home game" by burly American players.

Lalas' sin was in snubbing the English Premier League and going directly to the prestigious Italian Serie A, a league where few English players have been able to make it.

Then Lalas played a sub-par game in Wembley and English writers feasted on his mistakes. The day after the game, newspapers rang with the chorus of I-told-you-so.

Columnist David Miller in the Times of London referred to Lalas as "a clumsy, top-heavy red lobster with ginger hair and purple shorts who was always arriving late when (Alan) Shearer received the ball."

Miller also wrote, "How the Italians would pay substantial money for Lalas defies the imagination."

Said Rob Hughes' game story in the Times of London: "Lalas, the cult figure of America's high summer, was inept to say the least. . . . Lalas groped like an uncoordinated ostrich. . . . It made one wonder again how the guitar-plucking Lalas could have persuaded leading clubs in Europe that he was worth 500,000 pounds for a one-year salary. It is ludicrous."

The public was no less welcoming. The crowd at Wembley offered Lalas a baptism by ire. Alone among the Americans, Lalas was lustily booed each time he touched the ball.

After the game, Lalas admitted he had heard the jeers, but offered a typically philosophical response.

"I'm a professional athlete, and they pay me for what I want to do," he said. "If being booed is the worst thing that ever happens to me, then that's all right."

Lalas is accustomed to being underappreciated. On his first day as a walk-on at Rutgers, he stood before the coach in a line with other freshmen. The coach walked down the line and ticked off the accomplishments of each player: "Three-time high school All-American. . . . Scored 119 goals in his career . . ." When the coach got to Lalas, he paused and said, "He's from Michigan."

Nothing to lose

"I always think, `Hey, I really fooled them,' " Lalas said. "I'm the biggest con ever. They are going to give me a uniform? It was like that at Rutgers (where he won the Hermann Trophy in 1991), it was that way on the (1992) Olympic team. I've always had the I've-got-absolutely-nothing-to-lose attitude.

"When I made the choice to go to Italy, I knew there were going to be people who said, `This is incredible. I can't believe there is a team that's actually going to take a chance on him. Who do they think they are? I've been watching him for many years and he can't do anything and he's too slow and he doesn't have the skills.' I knew it was going to happen. And I (also) knew that there were a lot of people who believed in me and wanted me to succeed.

"So, when I came in, I wanted to be as humble as possible. And definitely not ride the summer's success. I wanted to prove to them that I knew what the hell I was doing."

Because the American public could not comfortably grasp the esoteric details of his hydraulic jumping ability and appreciate the nuances of playing defense, fans instead latched onto Lalas' image. There was more information about his career as a musician than interest in his potential place on the World Cup team.

The attention lavished on Lalas and the U.S. World Cup team gave him some hint of what life must be like for soccer stars in the rest of the world.

"For a 24-year-old, growing up in the States, never to have soccer be what it is. . . . " Lalas said. "People suddenly cared about what it is you did. For the first time in your life to be respected for what you did as a profession. I love that whole culture. I knew after it that I wanted to continue being in that. I wanted to go someplace where that could happen."