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• Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

  American Strikers, Courtesy of Haiti

  Tags:

  England,

  football,

  Haiti,

  major upset,

  soccer,

  Team USA,

  World Cup

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  In one of the rare moments of dangerous attacking play from Team USA during its 1-1 “win” against England during its opening game of this World Cup, US forward Jozy Altidore latched onto an angled pass in what English commentators call “the inside left channel.” Showing all the pace and power that have made him the great striking hope of US soccer, Altidore burst past rugged English defender Jamie Carragher. Shrugging off Carragher’s challenges with aplomb, he bore down on England’s goal and squeezed off a shot that brought US fans momentarily from their seats. The angle was tight, the shot could have been better, but still English keeper Robert Green’s reaction save was good enough to atone—partly—for his goal-giving gaffe in the first half. The danger was cleared. But had Green not saved Altidore’s shot, US newspapers would have been full of the historical rhyme that might have been. Altidore, as journalists who’d done their homework knew, wouldn’t have been the first Yank with Haitian roots to deal soccer’s mother country a famous defeat.

  Joe Gaetjens, the scorer of Team USA’s winning goal during their shocking win over England during the 1950 World Cup, wasn’t even a US citizen when he authored the “Miracle on Grass.” Gaetjens was a recent immigrant to New York from Port-au-Prince, a Columbia accounting student who played semi-pro soccer in Brooklyn and worked part-time washing dishes at a bar in a Harlem bar. The fact that he’d filed an application for US citizenship was enough, under the rules of the day, to qualify him for a motley team of part-timers and foreign ringers. Altidore, by contrast, is the naturalized son of Haitian parents who emigrated from their native land to New Jersey in the 1970s. The Gaetjens and Altidores, though, share more than their heritage and soccer-playing sons. Like most modern Haitian families, theirs are sagas shaped by two forces in common: the dark politics of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier—, and emigration to the nation that helped fortify his rule.

  Not long after Gaetjens’ heroism in Brazil, the scorer of US soccer’s greatest goal—who never did gain American citizenship—returned to his homeland. His story and life likely came to end at Duvalier’s most infamous prison in 1964. Though Gaetjens himself was uninterested in politics, he was unlucky enough to bear the surname of a family with known anti-Duvalierist ties. Ten years after Gaetjens’ sad demise, Joseph Altidore, hoping to avoid a similar fate at the height of Duvalier’s reign of terror, boarded a plane for Newark. Soon thereafter, a Haitian nursing student called Giselle sat down next to him on a public bus in Jersey and began speaking Kreyòl.

  When Joseph and Giselle’s son—who wears a wristband bearing the flag of his parents’ land whenever he takes the field—leads the US attack against Algeria on Wednesday, attempting to score his first US goal to fire the Yanks into the second round, few will be cheering him louder than the Gaetjens of Miami.

  June 22, 2010
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