Gregg Berhalters 18 months in England: He saw 9/11 unfold at our training ground

Gregg Berhalter and his Crystal Palace team-mates were eating lunch at the club’s Beckenham training centre when news filtered through that something was happening in New York.

Someone changed the channel on the canteen’s television and the room hushed at the sight of smoke billowing from the north tower of the World Trade Center.

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The group were still transfixed by the screen as Flight 175 ploughed into its south tower.

The Palace players struggled to compute what they were witnessing, but at least most felt removed from the situation. Not defender Berhalter. He was born and bred in New Jersey, the state just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and had family in New York. Moreover, his sister was in the air that very day, flying back to the US after visiting him in London.

“We’d trained that morning ahead of a League Cup game at Everton and were just taking in the images, not really understanding what we were seeing,” recalls Dean Austin, a stalwart of that Palace side, of those events in September 2001. “But, for Gregg, it was particularly difficult.

“There was no information coming out. He didn’t know what was going on and, given nothing like this had ever really happened before, it would have been easy to fear the worst. We took the coach up to Liverpool after lunch and Gregg was still waiting to hear from family and friends back in New York, worrying whether they’d been caught up in it all. The news that everyone was OK only came through over the course of that journey.”

The plane on which Berhalter’s sister was travelling eventually turned round and returned to Heathrow as flights were grounded.

With the internet not then what it is today, the centre-half and his Palace team-mate and compatriot, Californian forward Jovan Kirovski, spent the bus journey north phoning home while the rolling news updates blared out over the radio.

“For him to go on and play at Goodison Park (Berhalter started against Everton the following night) after all that uncertainty, and all the worry about people back home and what was happening in his city…” says Austin. “Well, that was testament to the professionalism of the man.”

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On Friday, the USMNT’s second group game at this World Cup pitches their head coach Berhalter against England counterpart Gareth Southgate, figures who each boast associations with Palace.

Where Southgate developed his playing skills through the south London club’s youth system and went on to captain the team to promotion before later representing his country, Berhalter arrived from Dutch football in early 2001 as a full US international seeking to extend his footballing education.

His stint in England was fleeting, an 18-month spell that encompassed 21 appearances (under four managers), a successful scrap against relegation from the second tier and one goal.

Yet that was time enough for him to become the first Palace player ever to feature at a World Cup, stepping in for an injured Jeff Agoos to start the 2002 last-16 win over arch-rivals Mexico and the quarter-final loss to Germany.

Even now, he cannot comprehend how his close-range shot in the latter, blocked with a hand on the goal line by Torsten Frings, did not prompt a red card, a penalty and an opportunity to equalise. The US were eventually beaten 1-0 but, as his team-mate Claudio Reyna pointed out at the time, they “played Germany off the park”.

Those displays did not earn the then 28-year-old any more game time at Selhurst Park.

He was quietly sold to Bundesliga club Energie Cottbus a month after the conclusion of the 2002 finals for around £150,000. His most successful playing days would be spent in Germany, largely in the second tier where he also played for 1860 Munich, in the seven years that followed. But he won 12 of his 44 caps while on Palace’s books.

And he made an impression in south London.

It was desperation that drove Palace to offer Berhalter a trial midway through the 2000-01 season.

The club had been bought by Simon Jordan the previous summer, the set-up ravaged by 15 months in administration, with manager Alan Smith charged with negotiating tricky passage through the first year of a comprehensive rebuild in the First Division, now the Championship.

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A side hastily flung together at significant expense by an ambitious chairman started slowly, rallied in mid-season, and then got distracted by an eye-catching run to the semi-finals of the League Cup. With resources depleted by injuries and the team in freefall, a belated transfer spree was sanctioned but, of the four signings made, Berhalter’s went almost unnoticed.  

The defender’s wanderlust had taken him from the University of North Carolina to the Netherlands at the age of 21, first with FC Zwolle and, later, Sparta Rotterdam and Cambuur Leeuwarden.

A clause in his contract allowed him to depart Cambuur on a free transfer in the summer of 2000 following their relegation from the top flight. Huddersfield Town and Norwich City – for whom he impressed in a 4-1 reserve team win over Bristol City – offered deals but were rejected. He also spent time with Bolton Wanderers and Everton but, in early 2001, was still without a club.

His opportunity eventually came at Palace, a side in need of defensive cover.

“I’d seen Gregg play at Sparta and Cambuur and I’d made some notes on him in my scrapbook,” says Barry Simmonds, then the club’s chief scout. “He had a good presence on the pitch; not a tough tackler – more of a toe-in, interceptor type – but he didn’t give away too many fouls. 

“We were looking for a left-back or left-sided defender to fill a couple of holes for the second half of the season and he was available on a free, so it fell into place. I’ve signed a lot of American players over the years and, in the main, they’re good characters — switched-on, robust and adaptable.

“We didn’t have any videos of Gregg, no data or anything. It was purely that I’d remembered seeing him play and had those notes. But you don’t play for the US if you’re shabby. As I thought he might, Alan liked the look of him.”

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His first contract was to run until the end of the season, though his adaptation to English football was hardly smooth.

Rusty after seven months without a club, he was substituted at half-time in his debut, a 1-0 defeat away to Barnsley; four days later, he was part of the team who returned to Yorkshire and lost by that same scoreline at Sheffield United. His next outing didn’t come for over two months — half an hour off the bench in an abject 2-0 home loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers which condemned Palace to the bottom three and proved to be Smith’s last game in charge.

📆 On this day in 2002

Gregg Berhalter became the first ever Palace player to play in a World Cup! 👏#CPFC | https://t.co/utMcYSDkhb pic.twitter.com/VAYziv20N7

Steve Kember and Terry Bullivant were asked to oversee the last two fixtures of the season with a team devoid of confidence needing to win at both Portsmouth and Stockport County to stand any chance of avoiding Palace being relegated to the third tier for the first time since 1976-77.

Berhalter was duly recalled in a bold 5-2-3 formation, playing initially on the left of a back three.

“Those two games were properly tense,” says Austin, who played on the right of that trio. “Everything was on the line. But Gregg didn’t need anyone holding his hand. He wasn’t fazed by any of it.

“He was a calming presence when we needed it. Gregg was a very good communicator on and off the field and had a confidence about him. He wanted information and would challenge you, too. As a player, if he didn’t agree with something – whether that was with a senior team-mate or a coach – he would come back at you. There were leadership traits within him.”

“He was the man for that moment,” says Simmonds. “He saw this as a challenge and just flung himself into it. We needed characters at the time. The heart had been ripped out of Palace by the administration and we’d been left with a really young group who needed guidance. Even as a newcomer to English football, there was something worldly-wise to Gregg.”

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Kember’s side won 4-2 at Fratton Park, but Stockport four days later proved more obdurate opponents.

With the game goalless, Kember abandoned his 5-2-3 after an hour, shifting Berhalter to left-back. The American laid the ball off for Dougie Freedman to belt a shot wide late on. Some in the large away support were in tears, resigned to their fate.

Then, with three minutes remaining, Berhalter watched a long Stockport throw repelled at full stretch and David Hopkin’s handball just outside the box go ignored by the officials. It was Freedman, now the club’s sporting director in the Premier League, who tore upfield, dribbled into the box and pilfered the goal which kept Palace in the second division.

Armed with a new three-year contract, Berhalter enjoyed his most prolonged run in the Palace team at the start of the following season.

Steve Bruce had been appointed manager and would regale Berhalter with tales of life at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson and alongside Eric Cantona. A figure who had always taken notes on every training session while in Dutch football now supplemented his catalogue with drills Bruce had learned at United.

The signing of another US international in Kirovski helped Berhalter and his wife Rosalind, herself a fine college player at North Carolina, feel more at home.

Palace sprinted to the top of the division, winning seven league games in a row in September and October. They even knocked Everton out on penalties at Goodison Park on September 12, the day after the 9/11 terror attacks, for all that the American departed injured midway through the second half.

By the time he next started a game, in early November, summer appointment Bruce had expressed a desire to join Birmingham City and had been placed on gardening leave, with the team duly plunged back into uncertainty.

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Trevor Francis, Bruce’s replacement in what effectively amounted to a job swap following his dismissal as Birmingham manager, seemed unconvinced by the American’s credentials. Berhalter barely played for the remainder of the season, despite maintaining fine form for his country.

In mid-February, Berhalter played his part in largely blunting Christian Vieri as the US lost 1-0 in a friendly away to Italy, and he was included in their squad for the World Cup that summer in South Korea and Japan. Asked about his bit-part role at club level in one of the media mixed zones, he admitted to a certain frustration.

“I could do everything in my power to win a place in the side, but if he (Francis) doesn’t like the way I play, I won’t get picked,” he conceded. “But unless something happens, I am coming back to Palace. I love London, I love England, and I like the club a lot.”

It mattered not a jot.

Palace bought fellow centre-back Darren Powell from Brentford that summer and Berhalter, a year into that long-term contract, was told he could leave.

He almost joined Iraklis in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. Instead, he and Simmonds flew to Hamburg in August to meet with representatives of the city’s second-tier footballing pirate ship FC St Pauli. But it was Cottbus, in the former East Germany and fresh from a mid-table finish in the Bundesliga, who eventually secured his services. His time in England was up.

“I’m not surprised to see what he’s achieved since,” adds Austin, who also played for Tottenham Hotspur and coached in the Premier League with Watford. “There are people I played with who I thought, ‘Yup, they’ve got something’.

“Terry Venables and Steve Coppell both saw my future in coaching or management and urged me to do the UEFA B licence while I was still playing. I saw that in Gregg, too.

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“He was a thinker, a scholar of the game. He thought about it quite deeply and was very, very professional in how he conducted himself in his daily work. As a team-mate, he was someone you could rely on. A really good guy.”

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(Main graphic — photos: Getty Images/ design: John Bradford)

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