As US national team #LegenDLandon Donovan prepares to play for his country one last time on Friday, plenty of tribute videos chronicling his USMNT career are undoubtedly well on their way this week.
Up first is U.S. Soccer, who recently sat down with Donovan for an extended interview, which is used across a number of different videos covering a number of different topics from his international career.
In the above video, which is the pick of the litter — a seven-minute tribute that even one of Donovan's former teammates wasn't afraid to admit produced a tear or two — he speaks candidly as ever about what playing for the national team for the last 15 years has meant to him, as well as "the beauty" of the universe conspiring to create a goal in soccer.
"I think one of the hardest things to do is to score a goal in a soccer game," says Donovan, referring to his famous stoppage time winner against Algeria. "Everything to come together that way, it's beautiful. I mean, it's really a work of art."
Also not lost on Donovan is what that goal, a moment he says he still gets stopped and reminded of to this day, meant to so many soccer fans around the country.
"When you finally break through, when it finally happens in a moment like that when there's so much tension being built; all the games building up; all the qualifiers before that; all the work you've done back to when you were three years old, running in your back yard; all of that culminates in this moment, and then it's just bang, and it happens.
"You can't help but just let go. What a cool moment. I still have people come up to me to this day and say, 'You have no idea what that moment meant for me. You have no idea what I felt during that moment, what you guys were able to accomplish; how it inspired me; how it inspired my family or my son.'"
