other foot. This doesn’t mean that Howard is taking
personal grievances into the studio with him—it means
he’s offering up a viewpoint that can only be held by
a goalkeeper who has spent a lifetime watching the
game take shape from the back. “You’re oftentimes not
right in the thick of it, so you see this broad perspective
of the field in terms of tactical awareness and spac-
ing,” Howard explains. “You end up seeing the game
differently than other people. Not a better perspective,
but a different perspective. I try my best to offer insight
in regards to what a defender is thinking in a moment
because of what attackers are trying to do to defenders,
how an attacking team will try to overload one side to
make defenders uncomfortable.”
You might not be able to tell while watching Howard
on TV, but underneath his business suit he’s sporting
a massive collection of tattoos. It’s obvious that he is a
fan of black-and-grey with great taste, particularly in the
portraiture he has collected.
Howard started collecting tattoos in the ’90s, so just like
practically everybody else who was tattooed in the ’90s
he has some tribal. But it’s his first tattoo, a Superman
symbol, that truly stands out as a time capsule. “I was
16 years old and I went down to this place in Jersey with
my brother’s fake ID,” Howard laughs. “It was 1996 and
I think Superman was a thing. I think Shaquille O’Neal
had a Superman, so I was like, ‘I’m gonna get a Super-
man.’ It wasn’t the smartest idea, but I was cool the next
day in school. At least I thought I was cool, everybody
else probably thought I was an idiot (laughs).”His own coolness may have been up for debate,
but there is no denying the cool factor of a certain
portrait Howard had tattooed by Emma Kierzek.
“I’ve got some really cool portraits that are just
special, they capture a moment,” he says. “JFK
was the personification of coolness and here
he is just smoking a heater, in a tuxedo, chilling
somewhere.”While he adores his many portrait tattoos—in ad-
dition to the 35th president he also has portraits
of his children, his grandfather and others—the
tattoo with the best story behind it is the piece of
script on his hand. “I’m a product of the golden era
of hip-hop and Nas is the greatest MC of all time,”
Howard says. “I’m not a ‘wanna meet you’ type of
person, but I had to meet Nas. I pulled out all the
stops, talked to a bunch of friends, and I ended up
going backstage and meeting him.“I was like, ‘Yo, this might be a little weird, but if
you sign my hand I would love to get it tattooed,’”
he continues. “So he signs my hand. It’s midnight,I’m calling all over Denver trying to find one of my
tattoo artists but no one is open. So I had to sleep
with my hand off the bed to make sure it wouldn’t
smudge. So that’s my favorite. For sure. Easily.”A lot of athletes have a hard time when their career
is over. For some, it’s tough to know when exactly
is the right time to hang it up. Others have trouble
transitioning into the new phase of their lives. Not
Howard.“Quite honestly, I have no desire to play the game
of soccer,” he says. “My body is beat up after 22
long years. I’m very thankful for what the game has
given me, it’s given me everything. But the time
was right.”What if a 6-year-old Tim Howard had never
stepped foot on that muddy field so many years
ago? Would people still be ducking out of their of-
fices to watch the USMNT play in the World Cup?
Would thousands of blue-clad Americans head
out to the bar at 7 a.m. to watch Everton Football
Club take on their hated rivals, Liverpool?We’ll never know the answers to these questions
simply because fate placed Tim Howard exactly
where he was supposed to be.