June 16, 2009
They walked by each other in the postgame mixed zone: Giuseppe Rossi and Jozy Altidore, two New Jersey boys, two good friends, two dynamic young scorers who share the same home state, the same club in Spain (Villarreal) and the same kind of blue U.S. passport.
They just don't share the same national team.
"Hey, Jo," Rossi said with a smile after Altidore had given him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
Altidore nodded and kept walking. It was a night of conflicting emotions, after all.
In his first game against his home country, Rossi had scored two goals for Italy (the country where his parents where born) in a 3-1 win over the U.S. in the first round of the Confederations Cup. And if you wondered whether it made the night a little bittersweet for 22-year-old Italian-American, you would be right.
"Of course," Rossi said in his thick Jersey accent. "When you play against a team like the country where you were born, it's always a great emotion before coming in. But when you're on the field you have no friends. You just think about playing the game and trying to win for your team."
No player had a bigger impact on Italy's victory than Rossi, who came on as a second-half sub with Italy down 1-0 and on one of his first touches prized the ball from U.S. midfielder Benny Feilhaber, raced into space and fired a 25-yard laser past U.S. goalie Tim Howard. Rossi added an insurance goal in garbage time, putting an emphatic point on his coming-out party for the Azzurri.
Altidore couldn't help but feel good for Rossi, the player who welcomed him with open arms to Villarreal last year, but it was tinged with the disappointment that they'll never play up front together for the U.S. team.
"I'm gonna kill him, man," Altidore joked afterward. "I played with the kid at Villarreal and we're very good friends. So I'm a bit happy and a bit sad. I would love to see those goals come against somebody else."
Altidore played his own role in the U.S.'s goal, earning the penalty that was converted by Landon Donovan for a 1-0 advantage. But this was Italy's night in the end, not least because U.S. midfielder Ricardo Clark's disputed red card changed the game. Most players thought Clark's challenge on Gennaro Gattuso didn't deserve a straight red,but the result was that it left plenty of open spaces in the center of the field for the Italian attackers, including Rossi.
It's not likely that the U.S. could have done much more to persuade Rossi to choose the Stars & Stripes. If you have the chance to play for Italy, you go for it. But that didn't ease the pain for U.S. Soccer of seeing an American native light up the South African night for another team.
"It would have been our hope that Giuseppe would have played for the U.S., but he made his decision," said U.S. coach Bob Bradley, who knows Rossi's family well. "He is a very talented young player.
Today is an exciting day for him and obviously a very disappointing day for us."
A day that U.S. fans always thought might be coming, eventually. A day when Giuseppe Rossi, late of Clifton, N.J., sunk the Americans.
Note posted in SI
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