Dempsey! Another memorable strike ... and man who predicted it

I’m in Austin for a few days, working up MLS previews for SI.com by day and absorbing SXSW by night. (Super-fast summation: eclectic and electric scene, great music and a crap-load of ridiculously pale people. No shit, kids, you're not vampires ... get outside a little bit more!)

Back to my man Bruce McGuire, who runs DuNord, a super-duper kick ass soccer news aggregator site. As I say, if Bruce ain’t linking to it, you probably don’t need to know about it. Just move on.

So yesterday I’m checking out a few twitter thingys and I see that Bruce is channeling his inner oracle on his pithy feeds. He’s checking out Fulham-Juventus in the Europa League and he’s on Clint Dempsey like stink on a port-o-potty.

He calls it: Dempsey will come on as a sub and crank out the winning goal, sending Juventus packing.

Do you know what kind of odds you could have gotten on that?

If you haven’t heard, that’s exactly what happened. If you haven’t seen it, do. Dempsey, only recently back from injury, hit on the most delicate and clinical of chips.

McGuire’s next twitter feed is this: "I AM THE NEW NASTRADAMUS!!!!!! Dempsey scores! Dempsey scores! Dempsey scores!"

Great stuff.

As for Dempsey, read on:

Craven Cottage is just down the road from its far more wealthy neighbor Chelsea. Belive me, London geography is about all they share. Chelsea is one of the league’s richest clubs, spending lavishly on transfer to put into its modern stadium.

Fulham must be disciplined in its spendthrift ways, in part due to limited revenue from a stadium that fell right out of the 1920s and hasn’t changed much since.

Fulham is a side that has perpetually flirted with relegation in its recent EPL campaigns. Threat of relegation is just part of the landscape 'round there, like red, double-decker buses and grey, damp weather. European play is a pipe dream on most seasons. To get there is a wonderful accomplishment. To take down Juve and spirit into the Europa League quarterfinals is damn near epochal stuff.

By the way, the roster of quarterfinalist isn’t necessarily a murderer’s row of Euro heavyweights, but it ain’t bad either. It includes Hamburg and Wolfsburg from Germany, Belgian giant Standard Leige, Spanish middleweights Valencia and Atletico Madrid, Portugal bully boy Benfica and sometimes-EPL heavy Liverpool.

And now little ol’ Fulham, thanks to a bit of magic off a right foot from the piney woods of East Texas.

One more thing: the book on Dempsey is getting clearer. Yes, he floats through some periods of matches without doing much to shout about. Yes, his body language in the national shirt isn’t always 100 percent what you’d like it to be. He’s not the perfect player. Few can be.

But this is a man who rises to big moments. His goal against Ghana at Germany ’06 threatened to keep the Americans in the tournament a little longer. When the 2010 qualifying effort started inching toward the danger zone, there was Dempsey to notch a huge goal against El Salvador, helping to get things pointed in the right direction again.

When Fulham needed a massive moment three years ago, there was Dempsey to provide it memorably. His strike against Liverpool in May 2007 saved Fulham from relegation.

The man is back. He may not be match fit just yet, but he’s back. You can bet Bob Bradley (who was in West London yesterday to see the game in person) is damn happy about it.