Jumping back in the saddle

Kasey Keller has spent the past 15 seasons at some of the bigger clubs in Europe. Tom Shaw/Getty Images Grant Wahl's Mailbag Grant Wahl will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Three weeks after helping rescue Fulham FC from the relegation abyss to stay up in the English Premier League, Kasey Keller has a decision to make. Should the 38-year-old American goalkeeper stay with Fulham, even if it means serving as a backup behind new signing Mark Schwarzer? Should Keller follow Brian McBride out the door and finish up his career in Major League Soccer -- specifically his hometown Seattle Sounders FC, which debuts in MLS next season?

Or is this the end of the road for the best shot-stopper in U.S. history?

"I'm basically sitting on an offer from Fulham, and I'm weighing my options," Keller told me from his home in London. "Do I want to go back into a fight with another goalkeeper and try to get some playing time? Am I happy just being a backup? Is coming home to MLS finally an option? Or is it time just to hang up the boots? Everything's being laid on the table."

Keller may be nearing 40, but if he decides to keep playing he can certainly contribute somewhere. He was in the nets as Fulham won four of its last five games in a miraculous run to stave off relegation to England's second tier next season. (Keller kept clean sheets in three of the four victories.)

Fulham's survival ranks near the top of his club-career achievements, Keller says, "right up there with the Cup finals with Leicester, just the drama of it and coming back from the grave. The team hadn't won in 34 [straight] away games. Then to win three in a row to keep the team up was pretty special. If I do decide to call it a day in Europe, it's a pretty fun way to go out."

The hard part for Keller has been explaining to American sports fans why anyone at Fulham should have been smiling after finishing 17th in the 20-team Premier League. (We'll take a quick moment for the non-soccer folks to explain: The Premiership, like most leagues outside the U.S., has promotion and relegation. The bottom three teams at the end of the season are relegated -- i.e., demoted -- to the league below, while three of the top teams from the second tier are promoted to the Premier League.)

Hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship and television money was at stake for the teams involved.

"From an American standpoint, if you said the Miami Dolphins are no longer in the NFL, they got relegated to -- I don't know, the Canadian league? Arena football? -- it just doesn't translate," Keller says. "Danielle Reyna [Claudio's wife] said something to my wife about how exciting the whole relegation thing makes it, and my wife said, 'Yeah, it's really exciting when you're not in it. When you're in it, it's the worst thing you could possibly be a part of.'"

In the end, Fulham squeaked out 17th place due to its slightly better goal differential (-22) than 18th-place Reading (-25), which also finished the season with 36 points. The only bummer for Keller was that Fulham's survival meant his pal Marcus Hahnemann, Reading's American keeper, will be playing in the English second tier next season.

"I would have preferred it to be Bolton," Keller says. "No offense to Bolton, but I don't have any good friends on Bolton's team."

Both Keller and Hahnemann hail from Washington State, the Cradle of Keepers in the U.S. (see also: Hope Solo), and Keller has known Seattle Sounders FC minority owners Adrian Hanauer and Drew Carey for years. The Sounders have gotten out of the gate well from a business standpoint, already attracting more than 16,000 season-ticket holders and a reported five-year, $20 million jersey sponsorship from Microsoft.

"There's definitely an interest [in Seattle]," says Keller, who grew up near Olympia. "The tricky part is it's May now, and Seattle doesn't start until January or February. If I re-sign here [at Fulham], then I'm unavailable for MLS until July 15 or whatever that transfer window is."

There are also financial considerations. With the U.S. dollar tanking against the British pound, even a modest contract offer in England (or elsewhere in Europe) would probably pay more than Keller could earn in MLS, where the salary cap encourages teams to sign cost-effective goalies. The highest-paid keeper in MLS right now is San Jose's Joe Cannon ($213,000), and it's unlikely that Seattle would use a Designated Player slot on a goalkeeper.

Whenever he does decide to retire, though, the straight-shooting Keller (who appears regularly on Sky Sports to talk soccer) would make a dynamite analyst on the tube. "I'd love to," he says. "It would be fun to give a little different perspective on things."