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Liverpool, England. Beside the park in perhaps the world’s most zealous sports neighborhood, an unanticipated love has sprouted this winter and ripened into wistfulness over the weekend.

Sighs abound because the dreamboat tourist must go home to California on Monday. The air brims with remarks like “Don’t want him to go” and “If we could get him here permanently” and “I can’t picture him out of the team, to be honest.” Affection has swelled until it is trendy to root openly for a distant workers’ strike which may enable his return.

In the two details that make this curious, the lovelorn happen to be some of the most informed, exacting sports fans on Earth — those of English Premier League side Everton — and the object happens to be an American footballer who is not a goalkeeper.

Landon Donovan, from that football guppy the United States, joined the 132-year-old club in January on a 10-week loan from the Los Angeles Galaxy. At the time not even the man who engineered the arrangement, Everton’s respected manager, David Moyes, foresaw the glee that would ensue. Nobody imagined Greg O’Keeffe of The Liverpool Daily Echo would wind up lauding Donovan’s “coruscating pace down the flanks.”

For all his record-setting scoring and assisting for the US national team, the 28-year-old Donovan’s previous stints in the Bundesliga had not wowed many, and in the pubs, fans can flash a knack for sipping and sneering simultaneously while pooh-poohing American football for its ostensibly laggard pace and physicality.

Moyes “seems to have mistaken Landon Donovan for someone who can hack it in European football,” harped one unmistakably knowledgeable writer at The Guardian. Nobody demurred.

Peter Howard, an Everton fan who witnessed his first Everton match in 1952, thought Moyes would employ Donovan “sparingly” and said, “I thought he’d be slower than he is.”

Mark Tolond, an Everton fan of 48 years, said: “When he came in, there were four or five players injured, and I thought he was really brought in as a cover.” Anthony Golding, 22, said, “I thought he’d be a fringe player.”

During 13 heady matches since, Donovan has propelled a spot-on corner kick for an assist in a victory over Chelsea and thrived in a stirring win over Manchester United. He received a lift from Everton prodigy Jack Rodwell, who hoisted the smallish Donovan for homage from the rousing crowd after Donovan’s goal on March 7 against Hull City.

He has prompted common chants in Everton’s Goodison Park Stadium of “USA! USA!” which, according to fans, can double as a dig across the city park at the other major stadium just a stroll away, that of colossus Liverpool, where fans roil and reel in disenchantment with that club’s two American owners.

“How quickly he has settled in has surprised me,” Moyes said of Donovan early and often.

In that assessment, Donovan has tweaked the American image, which has entailed mostly a stash of excellent goalkeepers (such as Brad Friedel at Blackburn and Aston Villa; Marcus Hahnemann at Reading and Wolverhampton; and Tim Howard at Everton) and a sprinkling of outfield players, including John Harkes in the 1990s and, of late, Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey at Fulham.

From the first moments in his well-reviewed debut at Arsenal on Jan. 9, Donovan exhibited the pace that experts suspected he might lack.

“He really impressed me from the first whistle,” Tolond said. “When we got the ball, he was taking on their fullback. He was dangerous.”

Everton has had finishes of fifth, fifth and sixth the past three seasons, and Donovan’s charges helped lend the offense a fresh dimension of precious space.

To the six-decade watcher Peter Howard, the pace and the boldness were a surprise.

While noting that Donovan “takes players on,” and that he is “not frightened,” and that he “gives us more room,” the seasoned Howard concluded in lofty praise, “To me, he’s an old-fashioned English winger.”

After just 10 weeks, Golding said: “I can’t picture him out of the team, to be honest. He’s made his mark.”

As the love-in built across the winter, so did a wish Donovan could stay longer than the return date of March 15 mandated in the contract.

Donovan stated a wish to remain until perhaps April 15, but Los Angeles manager Bruce Arena wanted to hold him to his contract with the Galaxy. Then, MLS players on Thursday authorized a strike by March 25 if they could not reach a deal with management.

As Donovan prepared for ostensibly his final Everton match on Saturday at Birmingham, fans over here have taken unusual interest in labor relations over there.

“All we want is this strike to continue!” Howard said, unleashing a huge laugh. “Til the end of the season would be better!”

 

The New York Times