and he only moved up into the fourth round.
But the hoi polloi, if you will, do have the chance to show that they deserve a longer look. That's how the fringe players need to approach the combine. No one is going to give them a starting job just because they can dribble past another 20-year-old punk once or twice. But a coach or GM might see something or maybe hear something about a player and decide to bring a kid in for a longer look.
What is that something? Intangibles: size, speed, attitude.
Back in 1996, I attended the first-ever MLS combine. The pre-MLS combine, actually. It was held over two weeks at the University of California-Irvine. I was at the second week, a fortuitous twist of fate, because it seems all the studs, like Brian McBride, Tony Sanneh, Jason Kreis, showed up that week and I was able to kind of share some of their spotlight. There's nothing like banging heads with McBride on a corner kick to prove that you have something worthwhile. But to be honest, I didn't really expect to be drafted; I even spoke to some A-League teams while I was out there.
Because I had not expectations, I had nothing to lose. As Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." So I was free to play my game, to play for the fun of it. I got some cool T-shirts out of it and reconnected with some old friends, like Brian Maisonneuve and Mike Clark. That was really what it felt like to be at the combine: Just go out and have fun. Play soccer with some of the best players in the country and test yourself. An MLS contract was as likely then as my getting a date with Keira Knightley is today.
In the end, it turned out that I had something that made the Tampa Bay Mutiny (R.I.P.) draft me in the last round. In a nutshell, my attitude to go out there and simply play kept me loose. That, and some evil-looking facial hair that scared the bejesus out of everyone - and to be honest, probably helped me stick out in the minds of the observers. It was this huge scraggly beard that made me look like either the Unabomber or a member of Grand Funk Railroad, a band I'm pretty sure Tampa Bay's coach, Thomas Rongen, whom I had never met and to be honest had never heard of, always dug, which explains why he took a flyer on me, brought me in to camp, and let me prove myself over the course of two months.
But that's how the combine works. That's its best gambit. It's a chance for players to give themselves a second chance. A second chance to keep working at a game.
Greg Lalas played for the Tampa Bay Mutiny and the New England Revolution in 1996 and 1997. Send e-mail to Greg at cheapseats@g73.org. Views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
