Joe-Max Moore grew up in Oklahoma, went to college in California and has a home in Florida. His profession has taken him from New England to Ecuador to Germany and now to Merseyside. He has a wider frame of reference than we generally associate with Americans, yet on Tuesday afternoon, like the rest of his nation and the world, Moore had only one place of focus: New York.
The fact he had just returned to his house near Liverpool after training and was preparing for Everton's League Cup tie with Crystal Palace on Wednesday night - a game in which he played 90 minutes - became irrelevant the moment Moore went through his usual routine when he first gets home and turned on the television.
"That's what I always do," Moore said. "Then I saw the horrific events that had happened. I was shocked and obviously nervous about the people I knew in the city, about friends, if they were okay. So I picked up the telephone immediately and I was able to get through for about 30 minutes. After that all circuits were busy."
Moore recognised he was lucky to get through and that he was even luckier in the replies he was receiving. His wife Martha was due to leave Miami for New York on Wednesday morning. That flight never left. Then his thoughts moved to one of his best friends who worked in the World Trade Centre.
"I was just nervous. My wife was supposed to be flying up there the following day and, thank God, she wasn't in the city when it all happened. She was in Miami but was going to New York the following day for a wedding.
"I have a friend who works in the actual World Trade Centre building itself - for Merrill Lynch - and fortunately he was out of the country at the time." The friend had flown to South America on business. "There were some people in the local area I phoned, just to make sure.
"Between that and the other phone calls I made, it settled me down a bit. But it was still saddening to see it all happening. It's sad to see because our country is made up of immigrants who work in and enjoy our freedom. Now we need to sit down and look at things in our country a little bit.
"Obviously professional sport is our livelihood but you have to step back and realise what's important. Then you start to go forward again later, but at a time like this you find out what is important to your life.
"I mean, in all honesty, I found it hard to concentrate on the game on Wednesday night. Basically I'd sat on the couch for 24 hours watching what had taken place and I'd not thought about the game too much until I walked into the locker-room. During the minute's silence I was just thinking of the people who have lost their lives and of their families. It's all we can do from here. I don't think anyone of our age has seen anything like this before."
Merseyside football has had its share of minutes of silence but there will be another today at noon preceding the 165th Everton-Liverpool derby. Where the 30-year-old Moore's mind will be then only he will be able to tell.
But he will not be resentful about being back at Goodison Park. Though there have been those who have said that all sport this week should have been postponed, and others such as Ryan Giggs who have applauded UEFA's decision to cancel Wednesday's Champions League games, Moore is less emphatic on the subject.
"A lot of people were questioning whether we should play or not but I don't think it was due to any lack of respect that we went ahead and played the \ game." When asked if he had considered approaching his manager Walter Smith to say he did not feel up to playing, Moore gave an all-American answer: "No, I'm paid to show up. When they tell me I'm playing, I'm playing. I had to get on with my job."
The son of a wealthy oil man who co-owned the Tulsa Roughnecks, Moore gave up history at UCLA to get on with the job of being one of America's new breed of professional soccer players in the early 1990s. After stop-offs in Ecuador and with Saarbrucken and Nuremberg in Germany, Moore returned to the US to play for the New England Revolution in Boston. Richard Gough, during his spell in Major League Soccer, spotted Moore and recommended him to Everton. He arrived in January last year, scored on his debut and in five consecutive matches soon after.
There was one more goal after that, but then none last term, and this season Moore has again found himself behind Duncan Ferguson and Kevin Campbell. If he is downhearted it doesn't show. Moore not only spoke enthusiastically about Everton finishing in the top 10 and about himself staying in English football beyond the summer 2003 expiry date of his Everton contract, he also talked eagerly of Europe, of exploring Italy and learning new languages .
Yet when it came to the subject of today's game, Moore, try as he did, could not avoid employing the "battle" vocabulary of football some might find inappropriate this weekend. "Like no other game I've been in," he said. "An absolute battle. Which is the way it should be I think. There are too many proud people in this city supporting their teams for it to be anything else. It'll be 90 minutes of all out - it's hard to say war at this time but it'll be that."
Matches against Blackburn Rovers and West Ham follow and then Moore flies back to the US for a World Cup qualifier fast assuming knock-out significance. Last week's 2-0 defeat in Costa Rica has hit the team's chances.
"We were first in the group two games ago, now we're fourth. We've got Jamaica in Boston in October and then Trinidad away and if we don't win both, we're struggling." If they do scrape through, Moore would be on his way to his third World Cup finals. At the moment, however, that's the last thing on his mind.
