12 years later Steve Samspon explains why he dropped John Harkes

[KC McElroy]

Damn, back in 98 when this happened I thought Sampson was completely insane for such a move but now while I still think Harkes's absence impacted the US team, however, given the circumstances, and if in fact true, I find it justified. Still even with Harkes we would have beaten them.

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Breaking more than a decade of silence, former U.S. soccer coach Steve Sampson said Tuesday he dropped John Harkes from the national team roster two months before the 1998 World Cup because the American captain was having an affair with the wife of teammate Eric Wynalda.

Harkes has long denied having an affair with Amy Wynalda.

Wynalda brought up the situation Monday night during a discussion on "Fox Football Fone-In" about a scandal in England over an alleged relationship between current English captain John Terry and the former partner of Wayne Bridge, his teammate on the national squad.

Sampson told The Associated Press on Tuesday he was glad the story was coming out now because "maybe people will have a little better of an understanding of what happened in the final months leading up to the World Cup."

After advancing to the second round of the 1994 World Cup at home, the U.S. finished last in the 32-nation field at the 1998 tournament in France, getting shut out by Germany, then losing 2-1 to Iran and 1-0 to Yugoslavia.

"It wasn't about losing 2-0 to Germany or losing to Iran," Sampson said. "There was more to it than that that impacted I believe the outcome of this team."

Wynalda said he spoke out during the program he co-hosts on Fox Soccer Channel because he was asked about Terry, who has been front-page news since Saturday in British newspapers.

"There's a lot of similarities between what happened to us in '98 and what's happening now to England," Wynalda told the AP. "It's an unfortunate time for England, because I know how that can affect a team firsthand. Obviously, we all know how we did in the World Cup in '98."

Sampson was replaced by Bruce Arena after the tournament.

Harkes was a member of the 1990 and 1994 U.S. World Cup teams and became the regular captain before he was dropped by Sampson in a surprise move on April 14, 1998. He made 90 international appearances from 1987-90.

"I am not going to rehash the things that have happened in the past," Harkes said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "1998 was devastating to me and my family. It was hard enough not to play in the World Cup, but it was even difficult to go through that time period, the most difficult time period of my life."

Sampson said Tuesday that Roy Wegerle, another U.S. player, came to him and assistant coach Clive Charles between the Feb. 25 game at Belgium and the March 14 match against Paraguay in San Diego and said he had personal knowledge of the affair. Charles died in 2003 and Wegerle, now retired, did not return a phone call Tuesday

In 1998, Sampson said Harkes, then 31, was dropped because the midfielder refused to play a more defensive role. Sampson also cited "leadership issues" but didn't elaborate.

Sampson, much criticized by players during the World Cup and fired after the U.S. was eliminated, defended his decision to hide the truth. He said he discussed his decision at the time with then-U.S. Soccer Federation president Alan Rothenberg, secretary general Hank Steinbrecher and current president Sunil Gulati, a longtime member of the leadership.

"I felt that these are the kinds of issues that need to stay in the locker room and within the team and not [be] exposed to the public," Sampson said. "The private issues for me were the most serious issues. I think I could have lived with everything else and kept John on the team if it had not been for the private issues. It's one thing to have an affair outside the team. It's another to have one inside. ... There are just certain lines that one cannot cross."

Rothenberg said Tuesday he had no memory of any discussion of the matter, Gulati declined comment and Steinbrecher did not return a telephone message.

Wynalda, however, insists an affair did take place.

"I'm calling it an inappropriate relationship. It was a major contributor to why I'm no longer married," said Wynalda, a father of three who separated from his wife in 2003 and then divorced.

Wynalda said that when Sampson informed him in the spring of 1998 that he was dropping Harkes, Wynalda tried to persuade the coach to change his mind. Sampson didn't recall such a conversation, but said that doesn't mean it didn't take place.

"At that time, I felt that he was still a player that could help our cause and he was still one of the best 22 players in our country," Wynalda said.

Wynalda and Harkes played together just once after that, when called in by Arena for a January 2000 exhibition at Chile.

"At that point, it was still manageable," Wynalda said.

Harkes, the U.S. college player of the year in 1987 at Virginia, was one of the first Americans to make the move overseas, playing for Sheffield Wednesday, Derby, West Ham and Nottingham Forest in England during the 1990s. He also was among the early players in Major League Soccer, playing with D.C. United, New England and Columbus before his retirement in 2002.

Like Harkes, Wynalda was among the early U.S. players in Europe, playing for Saarbruecken and Bochum in Germany before appearing for San Jose, Miami, New England and Chicago in MLS. Wynalda was an analyst for ESPN's soccer coverage in 2006 and 2007, and joined Fox last year. He was appointed last month as a part-time assistant coach of the U.S. under-20 team.

Harkes also worked for ESPN's 2006 World Cup coverage and replaced Wynalda as a lead analyst for ESPN two years ago.

Now working for different networks, both are preparing for this year's World Cup. Wynalda also is writing a book.

"I've suffered quite a bit through this whole process. My healing is over, so I'm OK to talk about it," Wynalda said.

Sampson, who plans to broadcast for Futbol de Primera radio at this year's World Cup, said he wanted people to know that he and Harkes mended their relationship in 2005 and exchanged a handshake.

"Maybe now people will have a little bit more of an understanding as to why I made such a critical decision back in 1998," Sampson said. "The last thing I wanted to do was drop John Harkes from the team because I really did believe that he was an outstanding leader on the field."

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-c...cc=5901&ver=us

[persianbruin]

interesting stuff!

[arash123]

wow wtf?!? i had no idea that had even happened. everytime i see 2-1, it just puts a smile to my face

[JMU]

12 years ago...still no one gives a shit

[KC McElroy]

Seriously John? You traded in your World Cup spot for this?

[KC McElroy]

https://soccer.fakesigi.com/steve-sa...c-wynalda.html

Steve Sampson is a lot like Darth Vader. He was hired by Real Sigi to be an assistant coach at UCLA, and after being trained in the Jedi arts, he moved on to be head coach at Santa Clara, where he was far enough away to win a national title, but close enough to Sigi to still be watched. He was then named assistant coach to Bora Milutinovic on the 1994 US Men's World Cup team. Unfortunately at this point, wise old Yoda, a.k.a. Alan Rothenberg, made what we now know to be the fatal mistake of putting Sampson in total control of the US Men's National Team.

''I knew his ambition one day was to be the national team coach,'' said Alan I. Rothenberg, president of the United States Soccer Federation. ''I held out hope for him in the future, but the much more distant future.''



Sampson then turned to the dark side, killed what was left of the 1994 team along with most of what would have been the 1998 team, and even had his sights set on the 2002 team before Rothenberg used the last of his powers to exile Sampson. After setting back the sport of soccer in the United States years, if not decades, Sampson went on to use his dark powers to banish Real Sigi from the Galaxy, win an unconvincing MLS Cup and threaten the peace of the Galaxy once again before being banished, hopefully for the last time.

Maybe Sampson could have been a good coach, if it hadn't been for the fear in his heart. Maybe the power was too much, too soon for him. Maybe Emperor Chinaglia always would have turned him. Maybe it could have been Real Sigi who went to the dark side, since he was also being considered for the USMNT head coach position.

Whatever went wrong, nothing set tongues wagging in 1998 as much as Sampson's dismissal of team captain John Harkes a mere two months before the World Cup, and they were wagging again two weeks ago with the news that Sampson banished him because Harkes was having an affair with Eric Wynalda's wife.

I'll get to the affair in a minute, but the fact of the matter is that Sampson had a long list of grievances against Harkes extending back over the course of several months. Amy Shipley, writing in the Washington Post on May 20, 1998, uncovered most of what got Harkes kicked off the team:

In a private meeting before announcing Harkes's dismissal, Sampson described to Harkes the following violations, Harkes and a U.S. Soccer Federation official confirmed this week:

- Harkes missed two team flights and one team bus trip in recent months. In each case, another player also was involved.
- Harkes and two other players returned to the team hotel at 4 a.m. after a night of drinking two days before the team's game Feb. 25 against Belgium in Brussels.
- Harkes questioned Sampson when told of a position change on the practice field two days before a game against the Netherlands on Feb. 21 in Miami.
- Harkes was frequently among the last to arrive at team meetings.



At some point Sampson probably felt his respect as a coach was being challenged, although it's stated that other players involved in the incidents weren't kicked off the team. The rumors of having an affair with another player's wife was probably the last straw.

But not only that, Sampson was faced with the problem of how to integrate a player like Claudio Renya into the World Cup side. Renya was very much an offensive minded midfielder, and Sampson had questions about how effective he would be playing alongside the offensive minded, personally forceful, and physically declining Harkes. Cutting Harkes largely solved that problem, and also explains how Chad Deering, Renya's midfield mate at Wolfsburg, ended up on the field in France in a defensive midfielder role against Germany. From the NY Times on April 15, 1998:

"I really didn't feel that Claudio was playing with the level of freedom, the level of enthusiasm, that he plays with at Wolfsburg," Sampson said. "In part, maybe I haven't been clear enough that I want him to carry the team more and be more responsible for the outcome of the team success. When you have a very strong personality in midfield, it might take away from Claudio."



Which means we should really take Sampson's comment from two weeks ago with a huge grain of salt:

"I would have loved to have gone to that World Cup with John Harkes; he would have made a difference on the field. But after this series of acts, one being incredibly severe, I didn't believe he still had the right to be there. It's really unfortunate.



Harkes getting left at home also symbolized how Sampson suddenly transitioned to a bunch of new players right before the World Cup started. Since Sampson was concerned about the US defense, he relegated Jeff Agoos and Alexi Lalas to the bench, brought in David Regis, and opted for three at the back. This was the second time Agoos would get shafted at a World Cup, and Lalas was likewise not impressed. Another player who was unhappy was Tab Ramos, who had been recovering from knee surgery and did well just to make the side in France. Harkes, Lalas, Ramos, and Agoos, along with Wynalda, were the ones who would complain loudest in the aftermath, and it was the snub of playing time, more than the affair, which divided and poisoned the team. From the Boston Herald, June 26, 1998:

"The Harkes situation is something that hurt the team," said Ramos. "No one is clear on what happened. If it is justified then we can understand it. But when I look down the bench today and I see Alexi, Eric, Marcelo and myself on the bench . . . this is the World Cup and you can't be experimenting in the World Cup."



No one understood what the hell Sampson was doing with his lineup card, and despite initially having a reputation for being a communicator, Sampson had totally lost the plot on conversing with his team.

Which isn't to say there wasn't plenty of blame to go around. A few years ago on BigSoccer Bill wrote pretty good summary of what transpired in France. The Cliff Notes:

Let Sampson say what he wants to try and rewrite the history of 1998 if it makes him feel better.

Those of us who remember the games know better. We were tactically inept, technically inferior and slow as molasses in January. There was an entire tier of players who felt that they were bigger than the team and had a God-given right to be there.

Sampson couldn't get their attention and finally canned Harkes to try and get control. All it did was make things worse and make himself into a laughinstock just a few months after naming Harkes "Captain for Life".

Then he sequestered them in that idiotic French Villa to try and "focus" them, installed absurd formations and made some personnel choices that defy explanation from amongst a group of players who had tuned him out and in fact quite openly didn't like him.

Then as noted we went out and played two teams vastly better than us, Germany and Yugoslavia, and got beat like a tied-up goat.

So looking back at all this, Sampson concludes that bringing in David Regis was the big problem, eh? Good old Steve - as absolutely clueless as ever.



Allow me to interject here that a good portion of the team was playing hurt or recovering from injury, which only added to the unfolding disaster.

Dan also puts things into perspective, and after a brief history lesson argues that the old guard wasn't good enough and neither was the new guard:

The 3-6-1 was borne out of desperate madness, but the key word is desperate. There were simply too many holes.



Dan has a lot of insight in that post, and you should read all of it. I agree with bringing attention to how self-serving it is for Sampson to latch onto Wynalda's comments that brought all this back up (as does Kyle McCarthy), and I also think that dismissing Harkes does nothing to explain Sampson's increasingly bizarre team selection, nor his inability to integrate new (much needed) players into the squad. Most of the moves were done in entirely the wrong way at entirely the wrong time.

On the other hand, the adultery rumors were only irrelevant in that they were merely the pretext for kicking Harkes off the team. In that they were also one of the primary methods Sampson employed to facilitate his bizarre reshaping of the roster, they were very relevant. In the same article where Shipley runs down the litany of bad behavior, Harkes hints he felt Sampson's allegations of the affair were out of line:

Harkes yesterday called the reasons for his release "outrageous" and said "I deserve an apology" from Sampson. Harkes said Sampson's handling of the announcement fueled scurrilous speculation that has been damaging to him and his family.

"The way he handled it left so many open questions," Harkes said. "It's a travesty. It's affected my personal life. Soccer is a job. When it carries over to your personal and family life, that's disgusting. All the rumors out there really have nothing to do with going to the World Cup. The real reason is Steve."



Harkes seemed to feel that whatever was going on, if anything was going on, it had nothing at all to do with soccer. Sampson apparently took a more holistic view. Here Harkes strongly implies that Sampson wanted him off the team anyway, made up the affair, and now was needlessly messing with his family life. Harkes would later deny the affair outright.

Given that there were plenty of other reasons why Sampson wanted Harkes off the team, I can see the player's perspective. On the other hand, maybe Harkes felt that he was above being held responsible by anyone and was totally out of touch with any kind of accountability he might have had toward anyone.

To this day the evidence that Sampson had against Harkes is sort of odd. Roy Wegerle was apparently some kind of party to a rendezvous Amy Wynalda and Harkes had in September 1997 at a US Open Cup match. But he wouldn't tell Sampson about it in until March of the following year, and his motivation for telling Sampson is still unknown.

As to what happened at that incident, you've got Grant Wahl with the most explicit claim:

And then, out of nowhere, [Eric Wynalda] said: "You know the stuff about [John] Harkes sleeping with my wife? It's true."



But Wahl didn't question Eric further on what happened, nor could he reasonably attribute what Wynalda said to 1997 or 1998.

And you've got Eric Wynalda's own, carefully chosen words from the beginning of this month. His first public comment on the topic was on an episode of Fox Football Fone-In in the context of the John Terry sacandal:

There [were] allegations that John Harkes had inappropriate relations with my wife and was removed from the team for that reason.



In this initial statement he didn't say that anything actually happened, just that there were rumors. I find this sort of odd. Of course then he follows up by remarking how he's divorced and lost Harkes' number, so I suppose there's really not that much to interpret.

Then Wynalda with the BBC:

Steve Sampson was privy to some information that was actually kept from me for a long time about an inappropriate relationship between my wife at the time and John Harkes. . . . Some of the things that went on I was unaware of at the time.



Was the 6 months between September and March the "long time"? Did more not come out until later?

Then Wynalda with the AP:

"I'm calling it an inappropriate relationship. It was a major contributor to why I'm no longer married," said Wynalda, a father of three who separated from his wife in 2003 and then divorced.



And finally Wynalda ellaborated on why he got divorced in another interview:

"Irreconcilable differences is the official reason in the divorce papers, but it was ‘the' reason," said Wynalda, who was the national team's all-time leading scorer until Landon Donovan passed him in 2008. "I tried to get over it. I tried to reconcile. I tried counseling. But there are some things you just can't live with, and that was one."



All in all, this really doesn't tell us much. Neither does Harkes' response in the AP piece:

"I am not going to rehash the things that have happened in the past," Harkes said on Tuesday in a telephone interview. "1998 was devastating to me and my family. It was hard enough not to play in the World Cup, but it was even difficult to go through that time period, the most difficult time period of my life."



Although it's not exactly a denial, it does nothing to clear up what it was that actually happened between Amy and John before the World Cup.

Maybe it does no good to wonder after the details unless you have a fetish for learning how human relationships work when monogamy and platonic friendships break down (which, ok, I do), but I'd argue that in evaluating Sampson's reasons for canning Harkes, the details are important. And because the specifics of what exactly went on are going to remain privy to a small group of people, I'm going to avoid making blanket statements of condemnation toward any party in this scenario. What has been made public is nowhere near enough information to pass judgement on.

Especially in light of this old dispatch from the 1998 World Cup:

In an effort to keep the U.S. team focused, coach Steve Sampson has kept his players secluded from their wives and families since they arrived in early June in France. But he loosened the reins a bit, when he invited the contingent to the Chateux de Pizay in Saint Jean d'Ardieres for an afternoon picnic with the players. The U.S. wives dubbed the rendezvous ''the conjugal visit.'' ''Amy Wynalda has been threatening for days to bring a blanket and pillows,'' said Kristen Keller, wife of goaltender Kasey Keller. ''I keep saying, 'Girls, girls. Calm down.' ''



You know, depending on your reading, Amy was either a liar, or she really cared about her husband. Maybe both. Maybe what went on between her and Harkes was a cut and dried as dirty sex in a seedy hotel room. Or maybe there was something more complex going on. And while I can understand why Amy Wynalda and Cindi Harkes might not want to discuss intimate aspects of their personal lives in the media, their own perspectives on what happened could certainly shed some light on things. I don't think we should overlook their actions and motivations in all this. While it's understandable to focus on the men's national team players, they were not the only, or even the most important, players in this drama.

At any rate, when Steve Davis says that nobody in the press really "knew" what went down, I'd argue that we still don't know the specifics of what Sampson or Wegerle knew before Harkes was thrown off the team. And as Tab Ramos' quote shows, it is very possible that a lot of the players weren't privy to those specifics in the tournament lead-up either. So to imply the affair was what split the dressing room, as Wynalda did in his statement on Fox Football Fone-In, is a bit specious. What split the team was Sampson's failure to manage several aspects of the World Cup preparation and tournament, and Harkes was just one part of that, with the affair being a smaller part of that. And while Harkes could at one time claim to be an innocent victim of Sampson's erratic management, that claim is much harder to make in light of what Wynalda is saying today.

[Messy]

Even if Harkes played, it wouldn't have made a difference. They may have scored one more goal overall, but I don't think they would have beaten us.

[KC McElroy]

Even if Harkes played, it wouldn't have made a difference. They may have scored one more goal overall, but I don't think they would have beaten us.

I don't think so either. I just think what an idiot he is for banging a teammate's wife right before the World Cup costing himself a place on the roster and ruining team unity.

[Messy]

I don't think so either. I just think what an idiot he is for banging a teammate's wife right before the World Cup costing himself a place on the roster and ruining team unity.

He should have banged himself instead....

[radin119]

and now we have to listen to his crappy commentaries