GOAL sat with the USMNT defender to discuss the highs and lows of his career, and passions that fuel him in the game – and in life
Sometimes, in the quieter moments, DeAndre Yedlin takes the time to look back at himself. Social media can lead to that type of introspection. Highlights are always a click away and old Instagram posts have a way of teleporting you back, don't they?
In some ways, he finds the old DeAndre unrecognizable. In others, he feels like his life has all happened in a flash. It seems as if only yesterday he was that kid on the Seattle Sounders with big hair and big dreams. Now, he's staring down the inevitability of it all. Where has the time gone?
"Sometimes I feel like I'm still in Seattle," he says. "I still feel I'm the same age. I feel like I'm 21 years old. I can definitely feel it physically now, though. Just recovering, I'm like 'Man, I don't know how I used to do that.' "
There are two halves of Yedlin's career, each wildly different. Most people remember the first. They remember the high-flying young defender pocketing Eden Hazard in Brazil. They remember the big move to the Premier League. They remember him as a breakout star with the U.S. men's national team with world-class pace. They remember him running like lightning.
What some don't remember, though, is how he lost his way in the midst of it all.
That's part of his story, one Yedlin is now eager to tell. And the story begins thousands of feet in the air. When you're on planes for long stretches of time, at some point, all there's left to do is think.
It was during one of those seemingly endless moments in the sky that Yedlin thought about Walt Disney. He remembers a story he read about the world-famous entrepreneur and pioneer of the American animation and entertainment industries.
The concept of Disneyland, so the story goes, began when the man himself was experiencing a moment similar to the one Yedlin had on that plane. Sitting on a bench watching his daughter, Disney began to dream, to think about possibilities, and from those thoughts came a world-changing idea.
Yedlin, admittedly, is no Walt Disney. He's a soccer player, and for long periods of his life, that's all he ever wanted to be.
But labeling Yedlin as just a soccer player is like calling Disney just an inventor. There's a creative side there, too, one that extends far beyond the soccer field. That's the side Yedlin feels more in tune with these days. That's the one that's itching to come out.
"I don't think people understand this, and it probably plays hand-in-hand, but people think soccer's at the top of my priority list," Yedlin tells GOAL. "Soccer is not at the top of my priority list, by any means. Soccer is – I don't want to say it's far down – but it's not top.
"I have a lot of different passions that I'm that I'm honestly very interested in. Especially at my age, I have to start thinking about what I'm doing after, you know? I don't think anybody that I've played with will tell you that I don't give it my all on the field. I do. I give it everything I have for the team and they know that. But there are so many other things off the field that I'm going after."
That is at Yedlin's essence. Soccer is what he does, not what defines him.
"I think if people want to better understand me, then it's important to sit down and talk with me," Yedlin says. "There's a life outside of soccer. I like to talk about what else is going on and my viewpoints on certain things. I honestly appreciate that."
The FC Cincinnati star sat down with GOAL to discuss the highs and lows, how he managed to rise from the toughest times, and passions that fuel him in sport, and in life.
Getty ImagesSoul searching
Growing up, Yedlin always wanted a big life. He, like millions of others, dreamed of conquering the world through soccer. And, during the early moments of his career, it felt like he was destined to do just that. After starring at the 2014 World Cup, Tottenham came calling. Yedlin was headed to the Premier League. He was going to London, arguably the best city in the world to be a star.
That wasn't necessarily what he found, though. He found something much harder than he imagined.
"Seattle's a big city," Yedlin says, "but it's not London, you know? I'd always wanted to live, or I thought I'd always wanted to live, in a big city. I got to London, and I thought I was going to be able to navigate it better than I was. There's a lot going on, a lot to get into, especially at a young age. I was making a lot more (money) than I ever had. I was constantly figuring stuff out."
There was a specific moment during his time at Sunderland in which Yedlin thought about giving up the game. Having already struggled at Tottenham, Yedlin was sent up north on loan to adjust to the Premier League. During that loan spell in 2015, he was yanked just 20 minutes into a match against Watford. He never thought he'd recover.
"I really hit rock bottom," he says. "My confidence was at an all-time low. For two months, I played the victim. I remember telling my family, 'I want to come home, I don't want to do it out here anymore'.' Finally, I don't know what it was, but something just hit me where it was like, 'You need to take responsibility for this'."
During the global pandemic, Yedlin had even more time to figure himself out. By that point, he'd become a regular for Newcastle but, like the rest of the world in 2020, he suddenly had endless time. Sport had shut down, and with time, Yedlin felt more responsibility. To do something. Anything.
So Yedlin did what many people did during those months: he went online, found a few books and began to read, determined to learn more about how the world works beyond those 90 minutes of soccer.
"I never really read books before," he admits. "It wasn't a thing of mine. I honestly hated reading. You could ask my grandparents who raised me, and they'll tell you that, growing up, we'd have a 30-minute period where we had to read and I'd literally have the stopwatch next to me. When the stopwatch hit 30, I would stop on whatever word I was on, not even finish a paragraph. I just hated it.
"But, at that time, I just went on Amazon and typed in 'Books about success.' I don't know why. Maybe I thought that was a mature thing to do or something."
And there was one through-line in all of those books, something that connected each of success stories.
"It initially started by reading about people who have been successful or found success in their lives through whatever endeavors they're going through," he says. "One of the things that I noticed was in every single one of these books, meditation was mentioned. In researching meditation, I got really connected with Buddhism and that way of life. And then through different books leading to Buddhism, I got connected to grounding."
AdvertisementUSA Today SportsThe importance of grounding
After every USMNT match at the 2022 World Cup, you could find Yedlin sitting crosslegged on the field, surrounded by teammates. Tim Weah was there. So, too, was Aaron Long and Sean Johnson. For that group, this was an essential postgame routine. Win, lose or draw, Yedlin needed that moment.
He needed that grounding.
Grounding is a form of meditation in which a people literally connect their body to the earth. For a brief moment, they distance themselves from outside noise and just sit where they are. At a time in which their professional lives were at their most stressful and their physical selves were half a world away from home, Yedlin and his teammates used those moment to reflect and reconnect.
"It just helps keep that perspective in life," Yedlin says. "We're so minuscule in the grand scheme of things. We're such tiny figures in the grand scheme of it all, but we also play a huge part. It's kind of hard, I think, for us as humans, to comprehend how we can be so small, but also play such a huge part."
The swirling world of social media, instant judgment and overreaction can be overwhelming for anyone, let alone for professional athletes on a global stage. Keeping that all is context is important for Yedlin.
"It's helped me find perspective and gratitude," he says. "I think in a sport where, especially now with social media, it feels like adversity gets multiplied by 10 because there's always a camera on you, always a microscope on you, and everybody has an opinion. I think it's important to find that space and peace …. At the end of the day, maybe as bad as it sounds, but all of this is just entertaining people.
"We're literally just entertaining people. That's all. That's all we're doing. That can bring inspiration, that can bring hope. There are obviously a lot of things that I think this sport brings in general, but at the end of the day, that's what it is. For me, it's always just about keeping that perspective."
The practice didn't begin in Qatar, at least not for Yedlin. In many ways, this was a shared journey with Drake Callender, Yedlin's former teammate at Inter Miami. And it was alongside Callender that those long plane rides started generating something more tangible.
Getty'Spirituality and mindfulness'
So many thoughts and ideas and inspirations were born on those long flights next to Callender. Disney, writing, inner peace, mindfulness… it all stemmed from seemingly endless moments in the sky.
During Inter Miami's preseason tour, the Herons jetted all over the world. From the U.S. to Central America to the Middle East to Asia, there were many sky miles racked up. There was also a lot of time to talk about anything other than soccer.
Yedlin thought about Disney and the steps he took to change the world. He also was inspired to become an author. Yedlin and Callender recently self-published the book "X Marks the Spot" designed to help children find the comfort and mindfulness they both had struggled to find on their own. It's the first in what he believes will be a long line of children's books published with one of his closest friends.
"We would just have talks about spirituality and mindfulness while going on away trips," Yedlin recalls. "We'd always have these talks that, once I got off the flight, I felt myself feeling better than when I got on it. It's just nice to have someone like that to talk to."
Those conversations also veered into the responsibilities of fatherhood, the impact of education and what he calls "the center point of life."
"I was a new father, and one of the questions I was always bringing up was, 'How do you make something that kids can do and that kids can follow?' " he says. "I think it's such an important aspect, but personally, for me, mindfulness should be the number one priority in the school curriculum. I think it's the center point of life.
"We just had so much time in the air, and so much time on the plane and, eventually, we were just writing and writing and writing. The feeling of publishing that book was honestly better than any feeling I've had in soccer, just because I feel like it hits so, so true to who I am as a person and where I think this world should go."
USA Today Sports'Nobody has lived in my shoes'
Eventually, though, the harsh reality of professional soccer was never far away. Shortly after those first few books were written, Yedlin was traded to FC Cincinnati. It's the way the soccer world works. Inter Miami has a salary cap to maintain, and Yedlin was a casualty of that. As a result, he had to leave Miami, – and his friends, Callender and wife Kyra – behind for life in Cincy.
"When we found out that Cincinnati could happen," Yedlin says, "bless my wife, that was the only thing she said: 'I just don't want to leave Kyra.' I think, if it was the younger me, then my mind would have gone to, 'Oh, what is everybody going to think about this move? What is the public going to think? How are they going to view me now? Am I not worthy of being here?'
"For me, though, it was just, 'Man, it's unfortunate that I have to say goodbye to this guy and his wife'."
Yedlin is no stranger to saying goodbye. His career has taken him from his hometown in Seattle to places he never could have fathomed. England, Turkey, playing with Messi in Miami – who could have seen that coming?
It's something he's learned to do throughout his career. He's also learned to block out the noise. That was something that he struggled with early on.
"Nobody has ever lived in my shoes, and I've never lived in their shoes," he says. "It's not saying that I'm better than anybody else; it's just saying that nobody's been in my shoes. To critique something that I'm doing, or critique something that somebody else is doing at any given point in time, at the end of the day, they're not you, they can't be you and they never will be you.
"It wasn't the same when I was younger. When I was younger, I used to get really bothered by it… It's strange because people will actively search for things that are negative. It's a weird phenomenon within our society, with humans in general. Pretty much all news is negative news, or it has some aspect of negativity because we're addicted to that.
"It's all strange, but I just learned to have that perspective that nobody's me, nobody's been me, and nobody's been in the situations that I have before."