Excerpts from his interview in The Times
In the course of an hour-long interview, Tim Howard does not swear. He does not jerk uncontrollably or find himself shouting or grunting mid-conversation. There is the occasional twitch, barely noticeable, but that is all. Howard, whose Tourette’s syndrome has earned more headlines than his goalkeeping since it emerged that he is heading for Manchester United, is an ordinary 24-year-old sportsman. Or rather, he is an extraordinary person, but far from the one-man freak show some appear to be expecting.
Howard was 10, "a regular kid growing up in New Jersey", when he was discovered to be suffering from the neurological disorder that is characterised by verbal or physical tics. Nine years later, on the verge of a first-team breakthrough at the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, he decided to go public with his condition — not, as might be expected in this image-obsessed age, to increase his profile, but to share his experiences and support those suffering in the same way he did.
When it arose that Sir Alex Ferguson was showing an interest in Howard, there was a predictable reaction in various sections of the British media. One newspaper joked that it could be no worse for the United defenders than playing in front of the famously abrasive Peter Schmeichel. Another said that Ferguson would still be the most foul-mouthed person at Old Trafford. A website ran a poll to ask whether the goalkeeper would be a good acquisition. "F****** yes" and "F****** no" were the options.
Word filtered back to Howard at his home in Kearny, New Jersey, that news of his imminent arrival in England had met with the exact response he had been fearing, but he was not concerned. "Only four per cent of people with Tourette's have the swearing. "I never have done and never will. It is a neuro-logical disorder and I have the tics, but people have been miseducated about it."
"Ignorance in its purest form is just that," he said. "If it was educated people saying these things, people with knowledge of the condition, that would be hurtful. But a lack of education is understandable. If I help people understand about TS, I’m happy."
"I didn’t get picked on at school, but that was probably just because I was big and good at sports. Many others have been picked on. For a long time I tried to hide it from friends and family and, later, from team-mates and the press, almost in a shameful way. Maybe I was worried that people would look at me and say whatever they would say. I didn’t want that, but thankfully I got to a point in my life where I decided I shouldn’t worry about it."
Howard went public at the age of 19, by which time, encouraged by his Hungarian mother, he was making a name for himself in what the Americans know as soccer. "It’s a middle-class sport in America, but I wouldn’t say we were middle-class. My Mom’s family had come over from Hungary during the uprising in the 1950s and my Dad is African-American. Initially, we were poor, but I played soccer with the middle-class kids. New Jersey is like that. I didn’t pick goalkeeping, it picked me. But I loved the position and the ups and downs of it."
Critically he is blessed with an affable personality, strengthened by the courage that Tourette’s syndrome has developed in him. "People are said to suffer from TS and, while that is certainly true in a lot of cases, I don’t feel that way," he said. "I feel it has made me stronger and, if my position means I can be a role model to help other people feel stronger, then it will be a positive experience."
And on United:
"I know I'm going to be yelled at, but he (RK) is a tremendous leader. "Roy Keane is more fiery than me, but I like to get ferocious for 90 minutes as well. I go after everything in the game."
"Fabien is a tremendous goalkeeper and he has won a World Cup, and not many players can say that. I like his style, he is aggressive and fast. I'm aggressive too, but we are different in other ways."