Clint Mathis brought the competitive fire he learned in his suburban Atlanta backyard to the forefront of the U.S. national team when it was needed most.

Clint Mathis' first soccer coaches were his older brothers. Andrew and Phil are eight and 10 years older than Clint, and with-out any local professional soccer team to watch, they were his primary influences.

Andrew and Phil were part of the youth soccer boom spawned by the NASL, but the Atlanta Chiefs were defunct by 1982, when Clint was 5. Clint adored soccer immediately, but very few of the neighborhood kids were his age, so he had to learn by playing against his brothers and their peers.

As if playing against bigger boys wasn't tough enough, Andrew and Phil put restrictions on Clint to improve his skills.

"When he was little [his brothers] wouldn't let him play unless he just used his left foot," says their mother, Pat Mathis. "They said if he used his right foot, he had to go in the house."

Clint's brothers also taught him the physical side of the game, how to use his body to his advantage.

He scored goals prodigiously from the start and participated in Georgia's Olympic Development Program from age 10 - at times up with the next age group. Mathis had not yet made the regional team when Roy Rees, then U.S. U-17 team coach, saw him and invited him to camp.

He didn't make the team that traveled to Japan in 1993, but around that time South Carolina coach Mark Berson took note of him.

CONTRASTING PERSONAS. Staying closer to home so that his family could watch him play was a major reason Mathis chose South Carolina. His mother and brothers frequently made the two-and-a-half hour drive to Columbia and watched Clint score.

He tied for the Division I lead with 25 goals in his sophomore season but suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The injury cost Mathis a chance at making the 1996 Olympic team, but he used the time off to work on his upper body strength. He recovered to help the U.S. earn third place at the 1997 World University Games in Italy by scoring four goals.

Mathis finished his collegiate career with 53 goals and continually impressed Berson with his on-field desire to win and his off-field modesty and generosity.

After getting berated by Charleston Southern fans during a game in his senior year, Mathis scored a goal and received a yellow card for tearing off his jersey in front of the opposing fans. Upon scoring a second goal, Mathis smugly tucked in his shirt while walking past the referee.

That type of game-day bravado sharply contradicted what Berson saw away from the field. Mathis regularly volunteered at a clinic for children with cancer without telling anyone about it.

"Most players do stuff that the university sets up for them, but Clint went and did this on his own," Berson said. "He has been completely consistent from the first day I met him until now. He's always been a great person, just a really good person."

MAKING THE MOST. Los Angeles selected Mathis with it's first pick, the sixth overall, in the 1998 college draft. In two seasons with the Galaxy, he showed promise, but was often squeezing between the team's big-name attackers for playing time. After three goals in eight games in 2000, he was shipped to the MetroStars as part of the league's arrangement to bring Luis Hernandez to L.A.

Mathis used the controversial move as a springboard, turning in an All-Star campaign with 16 goals, 14 assists.

"To this day, I don't know what to consider how I got there, whether it was a trade, a dispersal draft - what all that is, I don't know," Mathis said. "The plain and simple fact was, I knew I was going to New York and that was it. You can make a situation bad by moping around about it or you can take advantage of it and make it a good one."

Mathis' MLS success caused U.S. coach Bruce Arena to take a closer look. Although he had started in Arena's November 1998 debut as coach, a scoreless tie against Australia, Mathis played in just four friendlies in two years.

He aced his first test in qualifying by scoring the first goal and setting up another in the United States' 4-0 win in Barbados that clinched passage to the final round.

A suspension to captain Claudio Reyna created that chance for Mathis and when Reyna left the Feb. 28 match against Mexico injured, Mathis again produced - setting up fellow Georgia native and former Gamecock Josh Wolff for the gamewinner.

MOVING UP. Now Mathis seems to be the clear second option at attacking midfield, a position which for several years has had only one - Reyna.

Reyna has not played for his club team, Rangers, since pulling a groin muscle against Mexico, but he is expected to be available and ready to play in Honduras March 28.

Mathis has played forward and withdrawn forward at every level, but has very little experience at center midfield in a 4-4-2 formation.

U.S. assistant coach Dave Sarachan said Mathis is still adjusting to the position, learning how to be more consistent in keeping possession and finding his spot defensively.

"You need to know what you're going to do before you get the ball," Mathis said. "The international game makes you think more and make more right decisions or else you're going to pay."

In his recent U.S. performances, Mathis has shown his characteristic direct style and gritty attitude. First-touch strikes earned him the assist against Mexico and a goal against Brazil.

In a friendly against Colombia Feb. 3, however, Mathis got caught up in yapping at his opponents and trading fouls. Against Brazil, Mathis absorbed a whack from Ricardinho that drew a yellow card, then responded by shouldering Edilson to the ground twice and stomping on Ricardinho's foot for a caution of his own.

When tempers flared late in the Mexico game, Sarachan was not surprised to see Mathis drawing the ire of the Tricolores.

"After the dust settled and I saw Clint with arms up, jogging away from the whole thing, I said to myself, 'Holy smokes, what did he start here,'" Sarachan said. "It was almost like he lit a match and got the heck out of there, but I don't worry about Clint because he can handle himself.

"Within our team, you don't want everybody to be a choirboy."

Still, the coaching staff stresses that Mathis cannot let his antagonistic ways affect his play or cost the team in cards.

"That's the hard part of my game - keeping the mouth shut," Mathis said. "I think I can still play with emotion and intensity, but at the same time, I can't get out of my game because of a bad call the ref made or because somebody gave me a cheap shot."

When he tries to trace his saucy manner back to its source, Mathis concludes that he learned it from the same place he learned to shoot with both feet. His brother, Phil, agrees.

"As far as Clint's talk, it's just part of the mental game. It's all in fun ... To us, cuttin' up is the way we are," Phil said. "If we're not picking, we're not breathing. And same is true for Clint."