Not having to carry the weight of club and country is making it easier for Landon Donovan to show off his whole personality.
When thinking back on Landon Donovan during his playing days, words like “focused” and “driven” are among the first adjectives that come to mind. He was all business for both the L.A. Galaxy and the U.S. Men’s National Team, and most fans never saw any other facets to him.
There was Landon Donovan, outstanding soccer player. And that was about it.
Certainly, were Donovan not retired, you wouldn’t expect to see him challenging a bunch of people to step inside a small goal and don catcher’s gear to try to stop shots from the leading U.S. scorer of all time.
Yet that’s exactly what you’ll see in the new video Buffalo Wild Wings released earlier this week, which you can see below. With varying degrees of bravado, people tried their luck against Donovan. Succeed or fail, they all got to go inside and watch the Mexico-Jamaica game with the soccer star afterward.
Throughout it all, you’ll see Donovan happily joking around with everyone. He looks at ease, in a manner you couldn’t imagine when he was still scoring real goals.
Donovan says when Buffalo Wild Wings first approached him about doing the spot, the concept immediately resonated with him.
“They approached us and asked if we would want to do something fun and creative,” Donovan said to FanSided in a recent phone interview. “I’ve said to my agent for a long time I’d much rather do things that are enjoyable and creative and engage people in a real way than just doing some random ad or sponsorship agreement. They were glad to hear we were on board. They came up with the concept, and it was really fun. We went out to the Sherman Oaks Galleria in L.A., outside of the Buffalo Wild Wings, and we just set up a little area. I just stood there and kind of hung out for a few minutes, juggled the ball and some people started showing up.”
As the video shows, some bystanders were more willing than others to test their reflexes against Donovan than others. Did he take it easy on them? It depends on how confident they were.
“Everybody’s different, right?” Donovan said. “A few people were like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it. You’ll never score on me.’ And then some people were like, ‘I don’t want to get in the way of that thing,’ so it just depended on the person, and I kind of calibrated how hard I shot based on how confident the people were that they were going to save it. One guy was like, ‘I’ll save five out of five shots,’ so I made sure that I scored five out of five against him.”
When asked if this more lighthearted, easygoing Landon Donovan is something that was hidden away all along, he offers a very reasonable explanation.
“It’s not intentional by me, but I’m just more relaxed now,” he said. “People didn’t really understand that I put so much into what I was doing on the field. I tried to explain to people, soccer players, on paper, have a really easy job. We go in by 8:30 and we’re done by 1 every day, but for me, from 1 pm until the next morning, I was focusing on what I was going to do to get myself ready for training, and then for the game, eventually. And that was my mindset constantly, so going out and doing appearances or doing media and those kind of things, it was just impeding my ability to rest and get ready. But now I have more time, and because I’m not exhausted from playing all the time, I actually have a lot more energy, and it’s fun for me to get out and engage with people.”
He’s also taken on a new career, at least for the time being. Donovan has been part of the Fox Sports commentary team for the U.S. Copa America matches, something he claims to be having fun with, but also an endeavor that brings out the perfectionist in him. He notes that it’s easy for him to spot the mistakes he’s made after the fact and isn’t yet sure if it’s going to be a long term gig.
But as far as more semi-spontaneous promotions like skills competitions and eating wings with fans while watching soccer, it’s much more certain you’ll see Donovan similar things down the road.
“I like doing things that are engaging and fun and different, so I actually genuinely had a really good time,” he said. “Can you imagine sitting in a sports bar with one of your favorite sports personalities eating wings and drinking some beer and hanging out? I mean, it was a pretty cool experience.”
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