DOHA, Qatar — In the winter of 2010, Tim Ream received what he called “the Petke test.” Ream was in his first professional preseason training camp with the New York Red Bulls, and then-teammate Mike Petke decided he was going to test the mettle of the rookie defender. From a dead sprint, Petke went right through the back of Ream with a slide tackle.
Ream’s response spoke volumes about the kind of player he was then and would continue to be throughout his career. He looked at Petke, stood up, didn’t say a word and got on with the training session.
“He was testing me first and foremost, but what am I going to do about it?” Ream said during an exclusive interview with ESPN. “I’m going to try to beat him a different way because that wasn’t the way I played, and wasn’t the way that I knew to get the guy back.”
Such a reaction is entirely in keeping with Ream’s personality, one that radiates a calmness in all aspects of his life.
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“I don’t know that I’ve ever, ever really lost my cool,” he said. “There’s no point in retaliating or seeing red and getting angry because then your whole kind of [mindset], just everything shifts and you lose focus on what you need to do, and that’s just continuing to play the game, and then trying to win.”
It is that composure — not only emotionally, but also on the ball — that has come to epitomize Ream’s revival with the United States men’s national team during this World Cup. He has gone from being on the outside looking in, as it related to the US roster, to being indispensable. In two games with the Americans, the center-back from St. Louis has been one of the team’s MVPs. Ream has been his usual steady self on the ball, completing 89.1% of his passing and winning 60% of his duels, all while committing just one foul.
There is also Ream’s leadership. On the second-youngest team at the World Cup, the 35-year-old is the wise old head, although it earns him grief on occasion. Earlier this month, US captain Tyler Adams called Ream the “grandpa” of the group, leading to some good-natured banter on the team bus. Following Friday’s 0-0 draw with England, all of those aspects will be needed again come Tuesday, when the US face Iran with progression to the knockout rounds on the line. His teammates are grateful for his presence.
“The standard that [Ream] has been at, it’s been amazing,” said Antonee Robinson, Ream’s teammate and fellow defender at both international level and at club side Fulham. “He’s such a calming presence on the ball. It’s no shock to me. I’ve played with him for a long-enough time now to know what he’s all about. But to see him actually come out on this stage, when it was at one point looking like he wouldn’t be here, and raise his level even more than he has done already this season, it means a lot to me.”
It’s an approach that Ream has honed ever since he began playing soccer with famed youth club St. Louis Scott Gallagher. It was there that technical ability was encouraged and valued, which raises the old question: Did his environment mold him, or is that just who he is?
“I think it’s exactly within his DNA,” said Dan Donigan, who coached Ream at Saint Louis University. “I think it is his personality. He’s a very mild-mannered, soft-spoken guy. Nothing rattles him. He never overreacts to anything, on or off the field. He’s just a very composed individual no matter what he’s dealing with.”
Ream is more of the opinion that both nature and nurture — at least in a soccer sense — shaped him. He has four younger siblings, and he says, “They’re all a whole heck of a lot louder than I am. I don’t know if that’s a first child thing because my oldest is the same way. I’m not one of those guys that’s going to be the most vocal in a crowd. But with the ball, that was taught from a young age and, something that our coach really believed in.”
Ream’s steady demeanor and ability have served him well in a pro career that has now spanned 14 professional seasons. This is, after all, a man who in his past five campaigns has been on teams that were either relegated from or promoted to the Premier League. He also endured another relegation with Bolton Wanderers when he first went over to England.
“The first thing that comes to mind is it’s humbling,” he said of the yo-yo nature of Fulham’s recent years. “This game can give you so many incredible things and incredible moments and experiences. At the same time, it can take those away and then pull the rug out very quickly.”
Berhalter rang Ream up in early November to check on the player’s mental state, and see if he was still engaged. Ream was wary, lest disappointment smack him in the face again, but he hung up the phone thinking he had a chance to make the World Cup squad. As it turned out, these were significantly better than Lloyd Christmas odds, and Ream eventually got the word that he had made the team.
“I still was still trying to process it until we landed in Qatar,” he said.
But if the exchange with Berhalter included some tense moments, that was nothing compared to the conversation he had to have with this three children, Aidan, Theo and Lilia. Just three days before talking to Berhalter, Ream had booked a 10-day vacation to Disney World with his family. When Ream’s plans for the month of November changed, he had to break the tough news to them that the trip to Disney would have to wait.
“I explained to them, ‘What are your hopes? What are your dreams? Like, you have dreams, what do you want to do? Well, Daddy got a phone call, I am going to go to a World Cup, and we’re going to have to postpone Disney,'” he said.
It helped that his two boys are already huge soccer fans, collecting the stickers that accompany the World Cup. That helped soften the blow.
