KANSAS CITY, Mo. – If there's any turmoil going on inside Matt Besler's head these days, he doesn't show it.
Then again, when has he ever?
“From the outside? Yes, there's pressure,” Sporting Kansas City's veteran center back told MLSsoccer.com earlier this week. “But on the inside, you can't have that mentality. You just have to worry about what's in front of you – take it week by week, game by game, try and get better and be the best player you can be.”
Sporting's quiet captain – quiet, that is, with the exception of his spectacular long throw-in skills – does have a lot going on around him, though.
Ike Opara, the other half of what was supposed to be MLS' best center-back partnership, is out with his second season-ending injury in as many years. Besler's calm poise and positioning, matched with Opara's ebullience, physicality and freakish athleticism, plus the threat for a set-piece goal every time Besler took a throw-in deep in opposition territory? That's all on hold now, and nobody knows for how long.
At least Kevin Ellis has experience at center back alongside Besler because the other guys surrounding him in the starting XI are all new – in goal, at both fullback spots (for now, at least) and in the defensive midfield.
And on the US national team front, the bandwagon for Hertha Berlin wunderkind John Brooks to be Jurgen Klinsmann's first choice on the left side of central defense is gathering momentum as the youngster continues to perform well for his Bundesliga side.
Yet Besler seems unruffled by any of it: not by Opara's ruptured left Achilles tendon (though he's certainly sympathetic and acknowledges the loss to the club), not by the learning curves of his new teammates, not by the challenge of keeping his spot with the Nats.
Ask him what he wants most from 2015 – not for Sporting, because his first answer to that question is team-centric, but for himself – and Besler pauses, takes a deep breath and smiles thoughtfully, his standard response to a question when he's asked to talk about himself and not club or country.
“Nobody's asked me that in a while,” he told reporters at a club news conference earlier this month. “I think consistency. It starts with consistency. I think I've been an extremely consistent player for most of my career. Last year was the first time where I personally felt like there were too many ups and downs. I felt like I wasn't as consistent as I should be.
“So I'm looking forward to this season and getting back to where I normally am. If you look at club goals, it's leading my team, making the playoffs, making a deep run in the playoffs.”
Well, that and being on Klinsmann's roster for this year's CONCACAF Gold Cup, a trophy he helped to hoist in 2013. And that, he said, is also tied into his ability to help Sporting succeed.
“It's on the radar,” said Besler, who was called up for last week's friendly against Mexico, but did not play in the United States' latest dos a cero victory because of a stomach bug. “Absolutely, I want to be a part of it. Winning the Gold Cup was one of the best experiences that I've had as a professional, so I want to be a part of that.
“How do you go about doing that? You focus on what you can control. Right now, that's playing the best that you can for your club, helping your team win.”
Besler's favorite word from that April 3 news conference – “consistency” – kept popping up again on Monday.
“I think it's one of the most important pieces to the game, individually and as a team,” Besler said. “Individually, if you can be consistent, you're going to be ahead of a lot of people in the league. Same thing with the team. We've seen that. If you can be consistent, more times than not you're going to end up toward the top of the table. We've been able to show that the last few seasons. I think that's one of the hardest things to do in professional sports. This is a hard league. There are a lot of good players.”
Besler's definition of the word "consistent"?
“I think it just means showing up every day with the right attitude, putting in as much as work as possible to your craft and consistently helping out your team to succeed,” he said.
After an early hiccup –
being sent off with two yellows in the season opener
, which left him suspended for
Sporting's 3-1 loss at FC Dallas a week later
– Besler has done his part for Sporting at both ends of the pitch.
He has filled his usual anchor role on defense, helping Kansas City rack up three clean sheets through seven matches – and in both of their victories, he delivered the final assist on the match-winning goal. It's still early days, though, and Besler knows he and his teammates will be judged on whether they can get back to contending for titles again.
That sort of team success wasn't there for Sporting in 2014, after two straight years of winning silverware: the U.S. Open Cup in 2012, and the MLS Cup title in 2013, the same year Besler helped the USMNT win their first Gold Cup since 2007.
Kansas City, plagued all season by injuries and international absences in central defense and missing star defensive midfielder Uri Rosell after his midseason sale to Sporting Clube de Portugal, faded down the stretch and crashed out early in all of their competitions.
They were eliminated in the group stage of CONCACAF Champions League play, barely made their fourth straight MLS playoff appearance and then lost the play-in match to the New York Red Bulls. Besler, who started all four of the United States' World Cup matches in Brazil that summer and then came home to sign a Designated Player contract, along with US and Sporting teammate Graham Zusi, wasn't his usual solid self all the time.
“The second half [of the season], after he came back from the World Cup, those guys were tired. I think it was a number of things,” manager Peter Vermes told MLSsoccer.com last week. “He's probably being a little bit critical of himself, but it's more that it was a tough situation for those guys after they came back from the World Cup. They were fatigued.”
It wasn't just fatigue, though. Besler spent a good chunk of the year playing hurt, and playing down that fact.
He had to come out at halftime of the Nats' World Cup opener against Ghana with hamstring tightness – and saw Brooks, his replacement, score a late winner that briefly made him (on Wikipedia, at least), “the greatest American since Abraham Lincoln.”
Another knock picked up on international duty, a deep, ugly bruise to the back of his thigh sustained in an October friendly against Honduras, caused Besler to miss one match down the MLS stretch and visibly pained him in games after that.
Then there was the mental strain – from the travel for club and country, from playing on the game's biggest stage and losing a heartbreaker in the first knockout round, from all the questions about why the new DP wasn't in his best form.
Besler didn't talk much about it at the time. It took him months to bring up the Twitter hate he got after being beaten by fresh-legged sub Romelu Lukaku on Belgium's decisive extra-time goal in the Round of 16 – and he never fired back at fans.
In his recent news conference appearance, though, he was quietly candid about the mental toll 2014 took on him, and his own role in the ups and downs of the year.
“It just made things harder,” he said. “Again, I'm never going to use that as an excuse because players should want that responsibility. I think there were games where I didn't play as well as I wanted to. There were games where I did. But just that inconsistency is something I wanted to improve on.”
Sporting's late-season woes only magnified Besler's frustration with his own play.
“The team always comes first, so any time the team isn't doing as well as you're accustomed to, it starts with that, and it can be frustrating,” he said. “I think my nature and our team's nature is to work even harder. So we put in the work, we do a little bit of extra work, and then if that doesn't work out, yes, it can be frustrating. But that's part of the job. That's part of sports.”
So is the chance to reboot at the start of a new season – and Besler has taken advantage of it after the earlier-than-hoped-for playoff exit.
“I feel great – physically and mentally, too,” he said. “Sometimes it's not just the physical side. Sometimes mentally, you can take a step back, take a break, refresh, that does just as much good as taking a physical break. Both physically and mentally, I still feel better than I have in a long time.”
The struggles of 2014, he said, came with a significant upside.
“When there is adversity, you tend to learn a lot,” he said. “I think Peter and I are closer than we've ever been in our relationship, both personally and in our working relationship. I think that helps a lot this season – not to say that we weren't last year, but I think we've just grown closer working together.”
Late in the 2013 season, Vermes sat Besler out for several matches, stating his concern for the center back's workload for club and country. Besler, a Kansas City-area native who has spurned several chances to go to Europe and said repeatedly that he wants to play his entire career in KC, seemed uncomfortable even discussing the issue during interviews.
Some SKC observers wondered if a rift had opened up between player and coach. But Vermes denied any such idea, and Besler did return to the lineup, vindicating Vermes' decision with solid postseason play to help Sporting win their first MLS Cup since the then-Wizards did it in 2000.
And when goalkeeper and captain Jimmy Nielsen retired at the end of the 2013 season, the armband was passed to Besler.
“I've been tough on him,” Vermes acknowledged. “I've seen the ability, and I didn't want to let it pass by. I was going to help him squeeze every little bit out of him. That's one thing. The other is that I played that position. I know what it takes, and I wanted to give him all those qualities so that he could be the best player he possibly could be. And to do that, there are times I probably have to be tough. That's part of my job, but I think he knows that I have an incredible amount of respect for him.
“I think he's a good guy. I think he's a real professional, and if anything, I'm incredibly proud of the fact that he's risen to the level he's gotten to.”
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Besler also acknowledged that playing for Vermes hasn't always been easy, but he's grateful for the challenges in the long run.
“I think he likes to push me out of my comfort zone, whether that's on the field or off the field, and I respect that because he's trying to make me better,” Besler said on Monday. “If you look at it the wrong way, it can be difficult. But you have to understand why he does certain things and why he pushes players. The bottom line is he wants to get the best out of his players, and he wants to win. So if you have that attitude about it, then you understand that he can be tough on you and it's a good thing.”
Vermes isn't the only one who saw Besler's potential early on. Midfielder Roger Espinoza, now in his second stint with Sporting after two years in England with Wigan Athletic, recalled seeing the young SuperDraft pick as a rookie in 2009.
“You could tell he was a leader,” Espinoza told reporters. “Very smart guy, obviously. He went to Notre Dame, and anybody who comes out of there is smart. You could see he was a very quiet guy, very into the game, was a leader from Kansas City. You could tell right away that he was always trying to help people.”
That's still his goal, Besler said this week, both on and off the pitch.
“I just tried to be the best player I could be and be the best person I could be,” he said. “I've always tried to do all the little things right. I've tried to lead by example and tried to be myself. That's who I am as a person, so that's what I continue to do.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
