This story appeared in the May 24, 2010, issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. On the 10-year anniversary of Clint Dempsey's famous goal vs. Juventus, read SI's magazine profile of the U.S. national team great below. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
The man wore crocodile boots, a white cowboy hat and a belt buckle the size of a license plate. Clint Dempsey doesn't remember his full name—hell, nobody in Nacogdoches, Texas, does—but you couldn't miss him on the sidelines of Nac-town's Mexican League games, amid the cigar smoke and the fajita carts and the horchata peddlers.