In his first time on the ballot, goalkeeper Tim Howard was elected to the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame on Saturday.
Howard, 44, received 46 of 48 votes (95.8 percent) from the player selection committee and will be inducted into the Hall in a ceremony at Frisco, Texas on May 4, 2024.
Howard was given the news while on air as an analyst for NBC covering the Premier League and said, “When you play football, you try and play for the love and play for the glory, and hopefully along the way you do some things.”
A native of North Brunswick, N.J., Howard notched 121 appearances with the U.S. men’s national team from 2002-17.
He holds the World Cup record for most saves in a match with 16 when the U.S. faced Belgium in the 2014 World Cup. It was the second straight World Cup tournament with Howard in goal.
“You can’t think of these moments,” Howard said Saturday. “You get your head down and you work hard. I’ve always said I’m just a kid from New Jersey who enjoyed playing soccer and learned how to compete and learned how to love the game.”
In addition to his time with the U.S. National team, Howard played for the New York/New Jersey MetroStars (1998-2003) and Colorado Rapids (2016-2019) of Major League Soccer and Manchester United (2003-06) and Everton (2006-16) in the English Premier League, where he earned goalkeeper of the year honors in 2004.
In addition to being an NBC analyst, Howard is a minority owner and sporting director of USL Championship club Memphis 901 FC, which he last played for in 2020.
Among the others elected to the Hall was Josh McKinney, captain of the U.S. seven-a-side Paralympic team, who scored 81 goals in 124 appearances over 19 years. He appeared at the Paralympics in 1996, 2004 and 2012.
Also voted in were women’s player Tisha Venturini-Hoch and executive Francisco Marcos.
Venturini-Hoch was a member of the U.S. team that won the 1999 Women’s World Cup and played 134 international games from 1992-2000. Marcos was the longtime head of the United Soccer League, the lower-division level in the country.
–Field Level Media
