The day is coming when Clint Dempsey will no longer be a professional soccer player.
Exactly when it will arrive isn’t known yet. But this year is the first of the 34-year-old’s 13-season career when that time has been visible on the horizon.
Dempsey isn’t a guaranteed 90-minute player anymore for the U.S. national team, as a new era of young attacking prospects begins to make its mark.
The Seattle Sounders have been on notice since last August, when an irregular heartbeat sidelined Dempsey for the rest of the calendar year.
But that tough, spunky kid who learned the world’s game on fields in the small east Texas town of Nagodoches is still going.