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No One Knows If Stu Holden Is Still A Professional Soccer Player, Including Stu Holden
January 13, 2016
Leander Schaerlaeckens
NO ONE KNOWS IF STU HOLDEN IS STILL A PROFESSIONAL SOCCER PLAYER, INCLUDING STU HOLDEN
On a dreary, drizzly day last November, a few dozen nattily dressed men and women paid between $575 and $775 for a branded soccer scarf and a day of talks and roundtables about "activation" and "engagement" at a generic midtown Manhattan hotel. They had been lured by an ad titled Marketing's Hottest Target: The American Soccer Fan. The literature promised to educate them on how to "reach your targets more effectively by mastering the American soccer fans' many profiles and interests."
Also: "How should sponsors approach the Spanish-language soccer market?"
The American soccer boom has generated more and more of these types of events, as a mushrooming number of futuristically-named companies you've never heard of attempt to cash in. Among those new companies is HELM, co-founded by former U.S. national team player Stuart Holden.
Well, make that Stu. Nobody who actually knows him calls him Stuart. Five years ago, Holden emerged as one of the breakout players of the 2010-11 English Premier League season with Bolton Wanderers, becoming a darling of American fans. Of course, that was then. Today, it has been more than two years since Holden has appeared in a competitive first-team soccer game. His last contract expired in the summer of 2014. No one knows if the 30-year-old is still a professional soccer player—Holden included—which is why he's here with his new, pregnant wife Karalyn, hesitantly pivoting toward a post-pitch career at an age when he should be in his prime.
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A speaker introduces the next segment, a Q&A with Holden. He mentions Holden's 25 appearances with the national team. Holden winces. "25?" he whispers to a reporter, "That's it?" For once, he seems to only be half-joking.
Please welcome... Stuart Holden. Applause. Holden walks to the front of the room, betraying none of the endless injuries that derailed his career–the fractured eye socket and the ankle injury that ruined his first stint in England with Sunderland in 2005; the broken leg that left him hobbling at the 2010 World Cup; the gash on his knee that required 26 stitches and cut short his breakout season in 2011, and the cartilage damage that was discovered later; the torn anterior cruciate ligament in 2013; the reoccurrence of that same injury in 2014.
There's no limp, no visible evidence of his rotten luck. Holden is attired in semi-retired soccer player chic: bloused jeans, black tennis shoes with no socks, a grey HELM t-shirt and a dark blazer. He talks about his company, which he started with Landon Donovan and fellow national team veteran Brian Ching, and how it puts on soccer camps and clinics. Holden is charming and energetic, comfortable in the spotlight that has followed him most of his life. There's no telling that he and Karalyn flew in on the redeye from Los Angeles; that they got just a few hours of sleep; that Stu is on his fourth cup of coffee; that later in the same evening, they'll fly to the UK for his grandfather's funeral.
Likewise, there's no telling that Holden's soccer career lingers somewhere in the grey area between active and over, and that even though the future seems bright—with a baby and a business and other opportunities in front of him— Stu Holden isn't quite sure how he feels about moving forward.
The only soccer Holden plays now is in a weekly pickup run in Los Angeles, where he and Karalyn live. It's no ordinary pickup game, though. Italian legend Alessandro Del Piero, Donovan, Steve Nash and several soccer players-turned-pundits like Kyle Martino and Alexi Lalas participate as well.
Holden figures his body is ready to return to pro soccer. "I feel 100 percent healthy," he told VICE Sports in late November . "I'm not favoring my knee or thinking about it too much. But I put no pressure on myself. I've just been building it up and taking my time. Along the way, I told myself I'd figure out how it goes, if this is what I want to do, if my body is still up to it."
A few weeks after speaking to VICE Sports, Holden joined the national team as a "guest player" at its annual pre-season January camp in Los Angeles. He won't be playing in the friendlies against Iceland and Canada at the end of camp, but he'll be there, measuring himself, taking stock: of his body, and also how he feels.
Stu Holden (left) training with the U.S. National Team in 2010. -Photo by EPA
There is a lack of certainty now in how Holden discusses his playing career, a significant turnaround from previous interviews when his stated goal never wavered: to return to the field as soon as possible. Not playing simply didn't seem to occur to him. "You have to have that mentality when you're injured and playing at the highest level," he says. "There's nothing else than soccer."
That's no longer the case. Being away from the game for so long allowed—forced—Holden to pursue other things. When his contract with Bolton expired, he wasn't making money from soccer for the first time since he was 19; he still had to pay for a portion of his own rehab. Holden already had dabbled in television work; he has since become a regular on FOX Sports. He appears on ESPN a lot, too, and sometimes worked for NBC Sports Network as a color commentator when it broadcasted Major League Soccer. He's a natural on TV. It seems like a viable career. And that's complicating a possible return to the pitch.
"If the TV stuff perhaps hadn't gone as well and I hadn't enjoyed it as much, and with all these other projects I'm involved in, if I didn't have those, perhaps it would make that decision easier just to jump straight back and play again," he says. But it has gone well, and there are those other projects. "It makes the decision that much harder."
Holden has always had side gigs. He was a professional video gamer for a spell. And he played online poker to supplement his shitty $34,728-a-year MLS contract when he was with the Houston Dynamo. That allowed him to spurn better offers from the league, run out the clock to free agency and try his luck in England.
Now Holden has HELM, too. The idea came about over coffee. Ching, Donovan and Holden–retired, newly retired and whatever Holden now is, respectively–wanted to stay involved in the game and pass on what they knew. They debated the founding principles of their new company and came up with humility, education, leadership and motivation: HELM. It would fit onto a motivational poster in some office conference room.
They ran two camps this year, in San Diego and Austin. They broke even. During the Manhattan conference, Holden tells the crowd that making money "wasn't the point. It was more of a proof of concept for us." The trio wanted to see if they could "build a brand around it."
Holden talks like he's pitching on Shark Tank. Fittingly enough, he isn't just some figurehead. He and the two retirees really do run the company, going through the growing pains of logistics, division of labor and letting people know they exist. Holden handles marketing, digital and social; Ching is in charge of finances and events; Donovan covers sponsorship and acts as CEO.
Is HELM a good bet? Soccer camps are big business. Holden mentions an apparel play and plans to expand to five camps next year. He also talks about a charitable component and doing right by his customers. "We don't want to be the guys who turn up and sign autographs for 10 minutes and collect a paycheck," he says. "We actually want to be there. It is actually us out there, coaching."
The crowd is rapt. Holden connects. When he's through with his Q&A, he doesn't big-time anyone. He remembers their names, what they do, how they fit in. Working the room at a conference like this isn't at all unnatural to him, because working isn't at all unnatural to him: Holden mentions that HELM will put on a soccer tennis tournament at the annual NSCAA convention for soccer coaches, coinciding with the MLS Draft, in Baltimore on Friday. Holden tells a reporter in passing that he also has started a second company with his surgeon–who else?– called Ready, Set, Med, that is kind of like WebMD, but with videos.
A guy from a major company comes up to Holden to talk about potential business. They go outside to chat.
Many pro athletes fall into a black hole when they retire. They are mostly unequipped for a regular job, and clueless on how to go about getting one anyway. Very few American soccer players make enough money from their playing careers to go lay by the pool. The process of reinvention can be painful. "I've seen teammates and friends that have struggled with the transition," Holden says.
Holden knows he's lucky that, whether he's actually retired or not, he has somewhere to go in the morning, something to do. He has a few things going for him off the field and is in no rush to throw that away for a final crack at glory. "If I go back to playing I'll be extremely happy, and I'd love to play one more time," he says. "But I also know that if I don't go back to playing, I have a lot to be thankful for and things have gone well."
Holden has never hesitated to place large bets on himself. But now, with a wife and a baby girl due in February, he can hardly go on trial in Europe in the hopes of, at best, landing a heavily incentive-laden contract. "I'm pretty aware that if I went back to the UK or something now, at 30 years old and having had two-and-a-half years of injuries, that most clubs would take a look at me but would also be very skeptical of my ability to stay fit," he says. "That would not deter me, but if I'm looking at the big picture, it's probably not the smartest play."
Holden is convinced that his body isn't simply unsuited for professional sports. He believes that his ligament issues were the consequence of earlier injuries–owing to some combination of overuse, bad mechanics, overcompensation and returning too quickly–and that those all came from tackles.
While might be true, would a team looking to sign him see it that way?
"If you wrote down my injury history on a piece of paper and slid it to coach without a name on there–or you could even put on there the level that I played at–and you asked them if you'd want to sign them, I would be pretty confident that 99.9 percent of those people would say 'You're crazy,'" Holden says. "I realize that."
Holden enjoyed a breakout season with the Bolton Wanderers in 2010-2011. -Photo by EPA
Holden has every reason to move on. But he still has an agent, although he isn't actively looking to find his client a team. But Holden says he has a standing invitation to join the Houston Dynamo for preseason. The Dynamo still own his MLS rights; manager Owen Coyle was in charge at Bolton during Holden's peak and the two remain close. Holden also has talked to Los Angeles Galaxy head coach and general manager Bruce Arena, although never concretely about joining.
"I think I owe it to myself, and any team that I would perhaps be seeking out, to figure it out on my own before I start to dive a little deeper into those conversations," Holden says.
Figure out if you still want to play?
"Yeah," he responds. "Absolutely."
These are not the words of a man convinced he still wants to do what he's done all his adult life–or that he wants to let it go, either. Things haven't turned out the way Holden expected, and he's still grappling with the what-ifs? "If I think back to 25-year-old Stu who was thriving in the Premier League, my sole focus was to play for a Champions League team, to win titles, to win everything–I always shot for the moon, man," Holden says. "I never thought that at 30 years old I might be contemplating my career."
Holden recently became a husband. He will soon become a father. He lost his his own father to cancer in 2009, and knows that in in larger sense, his life has been good so far. "Obviously this isn't how I would have drawn it up at 25, but when I feel sorry for myself as far as my soccer career, I step back and look at the big picture and realize I don't have a bad a life," Holden says. "That's what makes me thankful for everything that I've got." Thankful, sure, but also still wondering about making a last push.
"I will always try to push my career as far as it can go in soccer," he says. "But I also realize that if that time's up, I'll make the most of the next career."
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