Premier player returns

This is Dempsey's first time back since he decamped for the Queen's neighborhood last winter, signed on with Fulham in the English Premier League, and scored the "$100 Million Goal" against Liverpool that kept the Whites from being relegated.

"Some people said, 'You're a Fulham legend, you'll go down in history,' " says Dempsey, who came off the bench in the final home match and scored on his first shot in the 69th minute. "I still haven't grasped the importance of it. I was just trying to help the team out."

His sniping skills come as no surprise to Revolution supporters, who watched the attacking midfielder drill holes in nets at the Razor, nor to anyone who saw Dempsey score the only goal by a US player in last summer's World Cup in Germany.

"He produces," says US coach Bob Bradley. "He can make plays that are unique, that can determine a game. He can make a play out of nothing."

That's why Fulham paid $4 million, a record transfer fee for a Major League Soccer player, to lure Dempsey across the pond in January. By the time he arrived, though, it was midseason and he was assigned a seat on the bench.

"It was tough, but that's the choice you make when you make the decision to play against better competition," acknowledges Dempsey, who was coming back from an ankle injury that hobbled him in the MLS playoffs. "Always, you want to be playing, to be one of the main guys for the team. It's tough when you're on the back burner.

"I was getting time, but not significant time. That had something to do with our situation."

As the season wore on, Fulham had begun slip-sliding down the Premiership table from eighth place toward the relegation zone, the bottom three places in the 20-club division.

"Relegation can kill a club," says Dempsey, whose mates won only eight of 38 matches. "Look at Leeds. They were in the Champions League and then they went down, then down again. It's like a downward spiral that you can't get out of."

It's a familiar spiral for Fulham, which has spent most of the past four decades struggling to go up the down escalator, often between the second and third divisions. In 1996, the Whites hit rock bottom, losing to the worst team in the lowest league.