Few people on earth travel as often as professional athletes. With On the Road, the GQ Sports Travel Questionnaire, they’re weighing in on everything from room service to flying comfortably to their favorite chain restaurants.
Landon Donovan has seen US Soccer in all of its forms. From the good (a Cinderella run to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals) to the bad (a winless trip to the World Cup four years later) to the ugly (being left off the squad in 2014), Donovan has been there for all of it. From his national team debut in 2001 to his final game in 2014, the permanently tan Californian was the heartbeat of the USMNT.
Nowadays, when he’s not at home in San Diego, the 42-year-old is broadcasting games for Fox, including this year’s European Championship. While the tournament is happening in Germany, Donovan found time to sneak away for a quick golf trip in Amsterdam—and to chat with GQ. As a person who traveled the world playing soccer for a living—he recalled having exactly one non-soccer job, a bicycle paper route when he was 14—Donovan has stories that stretch from Cuba to Korea.
A veteran of CONCACAF (The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football), he also knows a thing or two about tropical environments, and all the creepy crawlies that come with them. That’s why he’s working with Zevo, the official bug spray of Major League Soccer, to make sure others don’t suffer the same fate. “I go outside, mosquitoes destroy me,” he said. “I'm just constantly being eaten.” Of course, the American legend has some less itchy memories from all the soccer he played, including finding the friendly gaze of Tony the Tiger while living abroad.
I, unfortunately, grew up on the soccer field, getting destroyed by mosquitoes. So this was a natural fit for me.
I have three young kids now. I’m constantly having to convince them to wear bug spray and sunscreen when they go outside. This is genuinely the first product that they willingly put on. It doesn't bother them, it doesn't stick, it doesn't smell, and they can just enjoy being outside. They hate sunscreen. They've hated every other bug spray.
I’ll never forget. We were playing in Costa Rica one time. It was so dark there because the lights just aren't great. They don't work. We're playing on this turf field at [the home of Costa Rican club] Alajuelense.
We went out on the field for warm-ups, and there was a bug on the field that, I swear to God, it was the size of a big rat. Big bug with wings and whatever. I was like, What the hell is this thing? There are a lot of interesting creatures in some of those places. I wasn’t going anywhere near that thing. Trust me.
I'm conditioned now to wear a hat and sunglasses in the summer. I don't like that sort of attention. I'm pretty introverted, and that saps energy. But what's been really interesting in the stadiums is, it's across the board. Every game we've covered—when we do a pregame hit on the sideline, and when I walk down there, fans from both teams, no matter if it's Georgia, Albania, Spain, Portugal, France—they will say something. It's a reminder of how big this sport is globally.
Especially if it's a team that we played against in the World Cup. Slovenia fans will be like, “Oh, Donovan,” because they remember 2010 [when the US and Slovenia met in the World Cup]. Fans from the Czech Republic [now Czechia], we played them in 2006. Italy, we played them in 2006. So it's really been an interesting experience, and it's pretty cool actually, that people have been paying that much attention to the US soccer team and players. Everyone watches the World Cup, right? If you scored a goal against their country, they will have seen it.
Yeah. Let me think of my number of days. When I'm working, it's a little different because I know where the end is, and I know it's a job, and so I'm just powering through it. The days go really fast because we're working almost every day. On vacation, it's generally about six or seven days where I go, Alright, it's time to get home.
Well, when I first went, I had just turned 17. As a 17-year-old—especially, I think, as a boy—the biggest thing I wanted was independence. I didn't want anyone telling me what to do. I get to do what I want. So I remember for probably the first two weeks, I would sit at home and just eat Frosted Flakes for dinner every night and be like, “Well, no one's going to say anything. I can do whatever the hell I want.”
If we didn't have training, and I wanted to wake up at four in the afternoon, I woke up at four. If I wanted to stay up until 3 a.m. I stayed up. There were no repercussions, no responsibility in that way. It was pretty awesome!
Yeah, exactly. They were called Frosties. I would go to the store, and most of the stuff, you can't read anything. You don't know what it is. You don't know what you're getting. But you see Frosties and you'd see Tony the Tiger on the blue box. You're like, “I know that!”
Oh, Korea was crazy. I learned a lot about cultural differences in Germany, for sure, but Korea is almost a shock to the system if you don't know what to expect. We were in Seoul. There's so many people. In their daily life, people are very—the way their culture works is they are very pushy. They're just kind of like, Okay, get out of my way. I'm next. I'm next. They just kind of go, go, go.
You start to realize that's just the way the culture is. It's not good or bad, it just is. It's why I tell people that the best thing you can do in your life is travel, because you would have no idea unless you get out and travel. It was such a great experience. The food was so unique and interesting—some good, some bad—but it was a great experience.
I'm trying to think back. I would say, not until after the whole tournament. Because during the tournament, you're just so focused on the next day, the next day, the next day. What you're doing, next training, go to the gym. I was just reveling in it, to be honest. Certainly after I got home is when the ego needed some checking.
Well, first of all, soccer wasn't quite as big then. Second of all, there was no social media, so it wasn't crazy. But when I would go to soccer stadiums after that, when we would travel to play the [LA] Galaxy or Columbus [Crew], then I would see how people cared. I do remember being in an airport after that—not when I first flew back, but during the season by myself doing something—and some random person noticed me and said hi. That was the first time I'd ever been recognized in my life. "Huge fan. I really loved watching you in the World Cup." I was like, Oh, wow. People are actually watching soccer here!
Extremely. When I'm around people I know, care about, trust, I'm actually quite the opposite. I'm quite extroverted. My therapist always used to call me the reluctant superstar, because I didn't want any of it, but it was just there and I had to find a way to manage it appropriately. It was never something—and to this day—it's not something I enjoy. I'm just playing because I love to play and I get to make a living at it. But all the other stuff? I could have done without.
Well, I have to separate them, because game day and [being] around the stadium is totally different from the rest of the trip and the experience. The rest of the trip, people were always very friendly, very kind to us. Great food in all the countries, authentic food. When you'd have a piece of broccoli, you knew it came from the farm yesterday down the street.
But then you'd have to separate that from game day. Driving to the stadium, you would just see chaos, and people that hated you and wanted you to lose to their country. [There was] extreme passion for their teams. When you were there, if all you knew was driving to the stadium on game day and being in the stadium, you'd say, “This place is crazy. I never want to go here.” But the rest of the trip was amazing, and people were always very friendly and respectful.
There's lots. This would happen often: We'd go to the stadium to train the day before the game—and oftentimes when you went to the stadium, it's not always nicely paved roads, it’d take 40 minutes to an hour to get there—and they would never let us use the bathroom. We'd be hydrating, hydrating, hydrating, and, “Sorry, the bathrooms are closed.” What are we going to do? So, there were many times in water bottles at the back of a dusty road, peeing before training to relieve ourselves.
Lots of stories and memories in Costa Rica, at [Estadio Ricardo] Saprissa [Aymá]. When you get down to the dressing room—well, first of all, when you enter the stadium, the stadium is packed full of people two hours before the game, completely packed. Every person's already in their seat and they're chanting. This is two hours before the game.
When you went down to the locker room, it sat underneath their supporters section. So as you're trying to get ready, the whole thing is shaking. You feel like, at any point, it's just going to snap, and the roof's just going to collapse. Things have been thrown at me, people punching the bus as you drive into the stadium. It's intimidating.
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. I grew up in Southern California, so I was around Guatemalans, El Salvadorians, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Mexicans, all the time. When I was home, I was friends with many of those people. Restaurants I would go to, people who worked there, people that I would see on the street, we were all friendly, kind, respectful. Then you'd get into Guatemala or El Salvador and be in the stadium and you'd be like, “These aren't the same people.” Why are they hating me this way? But it's less about hating the opposition, more about just passion for their team, and literally willing to do whatever it'll take (within reason) to help their team win.
It was incredible. It's actually quite different now. It's been much more modernized and it's way less intimidating. But first, just being in Mexico City. The traffic, the smog, the heat, it’s challenging. And then in the stadium, there's so much history. There are a few stadiums around the world where you walk in—Anfield is one of them—and you can just feel the history.
There's something like visceral, you actually feel it. Azteca is the same way. World Cup Finals have been played there. There's so much history, and it's just this big concrete circle around you. It was, at that time, as intimidating a place as I ever played.
Yeah!
So, actually, we played a game in Boston. It was a qualifier or a friendly in Boston, and then we flew to Mexico City. And after tracking it back, I realized that in Boston, I had picked up swine flu. At that time, it was like, oh my God. It was worse than COVID. People thought you were going to die, because we didn't know anything about it. People thought if you got swine flu, you were on your deathbed.
Anyway, we go to Mexico City. I was starting to feel it before the game. Halfway through the second half, I was like, oh my God. I'm not in good shape. Altitude, heat, all that stuff. As we left, I got tested and they said, "You have swine flu." But it was like two days, no, maybe three days. One of the most mild things I ever had in my life.
But the crazy thing about swine flu was, I did an interview with the late Grant Wahl. He was asking me about being sick, he could tell. I said, "Yeah, I think I got swine flu." Whatever. So he puts this article out. Next thing I know about a week later, I'm in Manhattan, I'm at a bar. It's after a game, it's like midnight or something. I'm walking through the bar, and I'm single at the time, so I'm trying to have a good night. This guy yells across the bar, "Oh, that's the dude who has swine flu!" Mind you, at that time, swine flu was like, can't even touch you. It was like how people acted about AIDS in the ‘80s. I was like, “Are you kidding me, dude?”
My wife and I love the Maldives. We went to an island in French Polynesia. The Brando hotel in French Polynesia, off Tahiti, phenomenal. Our favorite, favorite place is Cabo. It’s so close to us. So our favorite hotel in the world is a place called Las Ventanas in Cabo. We'll travel other places, and every time we go…Why didn't we just go an hour and a half down to Cabo? We love it so much.
Oh yeah. Earnie Stewart. He was a Dutch-American but he played for our national team. He hated, hated flying. He was really, really scared. He grew up in the Netherlands, and you can drive everywhere or take a train everywhere, even if you're on a soccer team. He almost didn't play for us because he didn't want to fly! But I actually think he either did therapy or he did something to help relieve that fear.
But yeah, there were a lot of guys. We'd sit on a lot of planes where guys, if there were any hints of turbulence, they were holding on and breathing and praying and all these things. I always used to think, you can't control what's going to happen, so you might as well just relax. There's nothing you can do. If you're going down, you're going down.
Jesus. Let me give this a thought. I would rather—this is crazy to say—I would rather recreate the photoshoot, because that would be funny. I could make fun of myself a little bit. If I tried to do a rap song, first of all, I'd be beyond terrible, and then it would live on the internet forever. I don't want that. The photo already does, but I've dealt with that. I don't want to deal with a new embarrassing thing. I've got enough of those in my life.