Clint Dempsey in Rarified Air as Fulham Reaches Europa Final

It's only been 13 years since FC Shalke 04 defeated Inter Milan in penalty kicks to lift the 1997 UEFA Cup. For the American soccer fan, it might as well have taken place in 1897 due to the ever-increasing growth in the way the sport is consumed across all platforms on a daily basis Stateside since that day.

The 1997 UEFA Cup final was also the last time the competition's final took place over two legs. On the bench for Schalke in the first leg was American international Thomas Dooley. On the sidelines, calling the shots for Inter, was English manager Roy Hodgson.

Flash forward to May 12, 2010 in Hamburg and Hodgson will once again be in a UEFA final, even if the competition has since chanced its name to the Europa League. This time he guided Fulham to play Spain's Atletico Madrid. Possibly lining up in the Fulham midfield will be American midfielder Clint Dempsey.
And unlike Dooley, who was the son of an American serviceman and raised in Germany, Dempsey was born and bred in Texas and raised in the U.S. system, beginning his pro career at the New England Revolution before joining Fulham in 2007.

Should he play next month in the HSH Nordbank Arena, it would represent one of, if not the finest achievement for an American player at a club abroad.

Coincidentally, Fulham's semifinal triumph comes the same week that 22-year-old American midfielder Jose Francisco Torres helped Pachuca win the 2009-10 CONCACAF Champions League.

Dempsey, who came on as a second-half sub in Fulham's 2-1 victory over visiting Hamburg in the second leg of their semifinal on Thursday, has been instrumental a Fulham's run that included wins over defending competition champion Shakhtar Donetsk, Bundesliga champion Wolfsburg and Italian giant Juventus. Dempsey's marvelous chipped goal in the second-leg vs. Juventus has already been memorialized by the club in t-shirt form.

In fact, Dempsey will probably be the most prominent player on the Fulham roster to feature at this summer's World Cup in South Africa, that is, unless England manager Fabio Capello decides to include striker Bobby Zamora in his plans.(If you're Australia, keeper Mark Schwarzer is obviously important.)

Fulham, though, is a club that Hodgson has molded into one at which the sum of the parts is greater than any specific individual.

Until Dempsey reached the Europa League final, the list of Americans' achievements abroad is a rather mixed bag.

Jovan Kirovski, who's still on the roster at the Los Angeles Galaxy, gets credit for being the first American to score in the Champions League, which he did in 1997 with Borussia Dortmund. Kirovski is also credited with being the first American to win the competition, though his role in that Dortmund team was clearly much less than what Dempsey's is at Fulham.

Kirovski wasn't on the roster at all in the final, where Dortmund defeated Juventus, 3-1, in Munich. In four years with Dortmund, Kirovski played in only 20 matches. So yes, he gets credit for being on the team, but was a tertiary part, at best.

It's also worth differentiating Dempsey from Dooley, who won the Bundesliga in 1991 with Kaiserslautern, because Dooley was probably more German in nature than American. Dooley, who became a true ambassador for the U.S. and later the national team captain, didn't become a citizen until 1992.

Then there is Frank Klopas, who moved to the U.S. from Greece at a young age and came up through the American system, winning four Greek league titles at AEK Athens in the early 1990s.

Aside from Klopas in Greece, the main success by Americans abroad came in a few specific places -- Holland, Scotland and the English League Cup.

DaMarcus Beasley won silverware at PSV in Holland, playing a part in Guus Hiddink's team that won the Eredivisie in 2005 and 2006. He still remains the only Yank to play in the Champions League semifinals, where PSV went out to AC Milan in 2005. The last two seasons Beasley, along with countryman Maurice Edu, won back-to-back Scottish Premier League titles at Rangers.

Longtime U.S. captain Claudio Reyna, too, found success at Rangers winning the SPL in 1999 and 2000, along with the Scottish Cup in 2000.

As you'd expect, American keepers have won their fair share of trophies across the Atlantic. Longtime U.S. standard bearer Brad Friedel is credited with being a part of the Galatasaray team that won the 1996 Turkish Cup. Friedel was the starter for Blackburn Rovers in 2002, when it defeated Tottenham for the English League Cup.

On the bench for Spurs that day at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was another American keeper -- Kasey Keller, who himself won the League Cup at Leicester City in 1997.

Current U.S. No. 1 Tim Howard has won both major English Cups -- the 2004 FA Cup and the 2006 League Cup -- both with Manchester United. Howard was also in goal last season when Everton lost in the FA Cup final to Chelsea.

Former U.S. captain John Harkes, too, lifted the League Cup, starting in the midfield for Sheffield Wednesday as it defeated Manchester United in 1991. In a cruel twist of fate, Harkes and Wednesday then lost both the 1993 League and FA Cup finals to Arsenal, each by a 2-1 scoreline.

Staying in England, Bobby Convey and Marcus Hahnemann were crucial in 2006 as Reading won the Championship, gaining promotion to the Premier League for the first time in the club's long history.

Elsewhere in Europe, longtime U.S. international Earnie Stewart won the Dutch second division in 2000 at NAC Breda. Current central defender Oguchi Onyewu won back-to-back Belgian League titles at Standard Liege in 2008 and 2009.

Where exactly Fulham winning the Europa League with Dempsey as a key member ranks among as this is open to debate.

Taking everything into consideration, it would probably rank as the finest achievement by an American outfield player this century, with the only real rival coming from Beasley's run at PSV.

It's difficult to compare Dempsey accomplishments in 2010 to what Harkes did almost 20 years ago. Without Harkes, though, and other U.S. pioneers, it's hard to see Fulham buying Dempsey from MLS in the first place.

Whatever happens on the May 12 final, Dempsey has achieved something that nobody saw coming.

It also helps address one of the biggest issues that arose following the U.S.'s horrendous showing at the 2006 World Cup. That being that American players didn't simply need to go to Europe and play first team soccer, it's that they needed to find their way on the roster of the bigger clubs and get into the Champions League.

Fulham might not be a "big" club in England. Nor is the Europa League -- Europe's NIT -- the Champions League.

It's doubtful anyone that cares about U.S. soccer is going to mind.