Eddie Johnson - role model for US black footballers

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Eddie Johnson - role model for US black footballers

Cary (North Carolina) May 27 (DPA) Eddie Johnson powered his way into the US World Cup squad not just because he is an agile striker with blazing speed. He also wants to succeed as a black American athlete.

Football is well down the list of sports that US minorities see as a way to advance. Johnson, who co-led US scoring in 2006 World Cup qualifying with seven goals in seven games, is out to change that.

In a nation of suburban white 'soccer moms' who drive their kids to football practice, the soft-spoken 22-year-old's intense ambition is rooted in his gritty childhood in a Florida housing project.

'After high school, I'd see all my friends go to college, then they'd come back on the corner selling drugs, in and out of prison,' Johnson said. 'I saw myself being the same way - couldn't let it happen.'

His value to US football has been obvious since Major League Soccer (MLS), the professional league that centrally controls player salaries and transfers, last year rejected a reported five-million-dollar bid for Johnson by storied Portuguese club Benfica.

Now he is one of the highest-paid US players, drawing $875,000 a year at the Kansas City Wizards.

Johnson's chances of turning his World Cup debut into a showcase are clouded by a right toe injury that ruined the second half of 2005.

He has clawed back since the US season began last month, chasing the form that saw him tally 12 goals in 26 games to co-lead MLS scoring in 2004.

In Germany, he longs to recapture that focus on the game when 'I don't care about women, I don't care about going out, I don't care about getting a haircut and looking good every day.'

Johnson got into football at age nine in his hometown of Bunnell after some friends began playing. His first coach took on the role of the father Johnson missed while growing up.

His mother was less happy. Johnson remembers getting spanked for kicking a football around the house.

'I used to tell her I'm going to change her life one day and she wasn't going to have to work,' he told reporters during a recent US training camp.

Lewanna Johnson took a while to come around. Her son was a day from turning 21 when she went to the stadium for the first time, watching him in a World Cup qualifier against Guatemala. Johnson scored a goal in the March 2005 game and the US won 2-0.

Johnson, perhaps the most exciting young black footballer based in the US, could broaden the sport's appeal to African-Americans, even though teen sensation Freddy Adu tends to get more media coverage.

When Johnson helps lead football clinics for minority children, he knows why.

'Seeing my friends not doing anything, not having a father - all these things pushed me,' he said. 'Where I'm from, I wanted to be a role model to inner-city kids.'

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Eddie Johnson - role model for US black footballers