For anyone with a subscription to The Athletic, they have a fun read today with interviews with lots of players from the 2010 USMNT World Cup team on the group stage match against Algeria with Landon Donovan's injury-time goal:
https://theathletic.com/1784304/2020/04/30/landon-donovan-algeria-goal-oral-history/
I hadn't heard this part of the story before:
https://theathletic.com/1784304/2020/04/30/landon-donovan-algeria-goal-oral-history/
I hadn't heard this part of the story before:
Still an all-time sports moment for me.Quote:
DeMerit: So the third minute of the game, I'd got an elbow in my face, and it split my tongue in half. I had to play the whole game with basically half of my tongue hanging off, and not being able to stitch it, because it would take longer than 15 minutes and that's all we had at halftime. If you look at any of the photos from that match, I had this Kool-Aid blood mustache running around my whole mouth. I was just kind of in survival mode, but I wasn't going to come off. That's my memory of it, just kind of getting through each play, getting to the water bottle, going to the physio so he could coat my tongue in Vaseline.
The best story is that after I played 87 minutes with half a tongue, I'm now in the locker room getting my tongue stitched up five or six stitches, perpendicular to the length of my tongue and Bill Clinton comes in with a cooler full of Budweiser. Bill starts passing them out to the boys, so there I am and I can't even talk. I'm drinking Budweiser with a swollen tongue, slamming beers with Bill with my shirt off.
I was mumble talking and trying my best, but definitely enjoying the moment. For a kid from Wisconsin, drinkin' Budweiser with the president with his shirt off is so Wisconsin. I couldn't have been more proud.