There is so much more to these guys’ World Cup journey! And I hope more stories will be forthcoming (I’ve been promising to write the book of my adventure traveling to watch them. Imagine the books they could write!) … But this day, the U.S Men’s National Team was two weeks away from leaving their training camp in Northern California and flying to São Paulo for what would be an epic showing that ran through the group stage and into a gripping Round of 16 performance in Salvador, Bahia, ending in defeat to Belgium.

Fellow Hoosier DaMarcus Beasley agreed to sit for a pre-Cup interview with me, as I was then news editor at NUVO, the alt weekly in Indianapolis, and I was insistent that he receive some front-page props for his monumental achievement of becoming the first U.S. player to appear in four consecutive World Cups!

The U.S. team’s front-office handlers, though, were not anticipating me being on the field that day in California. It wasn’t an open practice. But they didn’t tell me that. And they didn’t know I got there early enough to gain the knowledge and field position necessary to achieve my goal for the day, which was to absorb as much as this pure magic as possible! The handlers didn’t know they were dealing with a player who had traveled a long way to get to that field and was pleased that God magically removed every obstacle to her path … so much so that to her immense surprise, she found herself alone on the field with the entire U.S. National Team and its legendary head coach, World Cup winner from the great 1990 German team, Jürgen Klinsmann. I was in absolute heaven. Everyone was a pure gentlemen and totally ignored me, which was exactly what I wanted. I really truly was there to watch them work. And, boy, did they work!

Today, The Crack Podcast hosted Clint Dempsey and listening to him speak with DaMarcus and crew made me flashback to that perfect May morning seven years ago … You guys were great!

There’s more editing and meta-tagging to do on these photos, but just for the record, the album of the photos I took that day is archived on Flickr.