KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Same initials. Only one letter's worth of difference between their last names. And one has the confidence of his teammates every time he steps into goal, just as the other did when Kansas City's MLS side won their first three pieces of silverware more than a decade ago.
There's another link between current Sporting Kansas City 'keeper Tim Melia and U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Tony Meola, though – although neither one remembers the exact circumstances.
That's understandable, though. At the time, Meola was a star who had already been to two World Cups with the US national team and tried out with the NFL's New York Jets – and Melia was a kid growing up on Long Island who attended one of Meola's camps there in the mid-1990s.
“I was so young,” Melia told MLSsoccer.com on Monday. “This had to be one of those situations where there were about a hundred goalkeepers, and he just had a camp passing through our area. I had to be 10 years old. I don't really remember it that much. I just remember the name – going to Tony Meola Soccer Camps on Long Island.”
But if the particulars are lost to time, Meola knows what he would have stressed in the camp – because it's the approach he still takes in working with everyone from young hopefuls just beginning their careers to US youth internationals looking to take their next steps for club and country.
“It's the same message all the time: 'This is how the pros train,'” Meola told MLSsoccer.com by phone on Tuesday from New Jersey. “And I'm a believer that if you do it that way, they'll pick it up. They'll get it, and they'll understand it.”
Until this season, Melia – a former league pool 'keeper with only six MLS appearances before Kansas City signed him in the offseason – had been doing a lot more training than playing in the top flight. But after taking over as Sporting's No. 1 from the now-departed Luis Marin, he's unbeaten – with five clean sheets – in seven starts across all competitions going into Sunday's away match against Real Salt Lake (10 pm ET, FOX Sports 1).
“He's having a really nice season,” said Meola, who still holds MLS' single-season record with 16 shutouts, set in 2000 when the then-Wizards won the Supporters Shield and their first MLS Cup (in which he also recorded a clean sheet in a 1-0 victory over the Chicago Fire). “It comes at a time where they needed, obviously, to solidify that spot a little bit.
“And I think he's fit in really nicely to this little run that they are having here. So it's good to see, because he probably needed it in his career and Sporting Kansas City needed it in their year, for sure.”
After Sporting's most recent league match, a 1-0 home victory over Seattle on June 6, manager Peter Vermes – who anchored Kansas City's central defense on that 2000 squad – name-dropped his old teammate when talking about Melia's run of form.
“He has added another dimension to our team that we have been looking for,” Vermes told reporters. “I can only speak having played in a situation like that, with a goalkeeper, when Tony Meola was here, and I was in front of him, and we were the backline and we had a bunch of clean sheets.
“We won as well, and you just know that there is a confidence between the backline and the goalkeeper and vice versa. And when that’s going on, that is a very good culture to be wielding over the course of the season.”
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That wasn't intended to be a comparison of the two keepers' accomplishments or playing styles, Vermes said on Monday, but a recognition of the confidence Melia has earned.
“Obviously, Tony had a little bit different level of a career at this point,” Vermes said. “I meant it more from, when you knew Tony was playing behind you, you were confident that you had the guy behind you that was going to make the save. I think our guys are thinking the same way right now. They have that kind of trust in him, which is a great thing for a team to have in a goalkeeper.”
Any comparison to Meola – who also had the shutout when Sporting beat Chicago 1-0 in extra time for the 2004 US Open Cup title – comes as an honor, Melia said.
“Obviously, to be put in a category with any goalkeeper who's had such a storied career as him is very good,” he said. “Hopefully, it's just the beginning. I've only had a few games. I'm just hoping to build off that and keep going.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
