Most everyone who has followed Landon Donovan‘s soccer career, even when he was playing in his first World Cup, in 2002, did the math and came to a quick conclusion:

If everything goes well … he would be able to play for the United States through the 2014 World Cup.

He would be 32 that year, we calculated back in 2002, which is a bit old, but not ancient. And, more, he would be 36 in 2018 — which is old for anyone who isn’t a goalkeeper.

Espn.com, in one of those silly moments of trying to take ownership of a “story” from a particularly accessible star, a story everyone figured out more than a decade ago, has Landon agreeing (of course) that 2014 Brazil could be the end of the line for him.

A few thoughts about this:

1. The key thing now is … Landon needs to stay healthy until June. He has never had a really major injury (knock on wood), and if can avoid one until the plane for Brazil takes off … he is on the team and will play in his fourth World Cup. (Granted, he has had several smallish injuries in recent years, which tends to happen to guys who play as long as he has.)

2. Another injury thought; it probably is to Landon’s advantage that he is a fairly compact player. I think it is the tall and the slight who are more likely to be hurt. Also, too, he spent most of his years as a forward, and out of the meat grinder that is the midfield.

3. Also, Landon came early to the notion that he needed to take very good care of his body to extend his career. He has been doing this certainly no later than his loan to Bayern Munich, in 2009, when he turned 27. More than once, he agreed to talk to me about his diet, nutrition and conditioning, but we never got around to that conversation before I left the country. It has been a big deal for him for a long time, though.

4. If Landon plays at Brazil, he will be second on the list of players appearing in the most World Cups. With four. Granted, he would be sharing second place with a lot of guys, which you can see by checking the list, including Kasey Keller and Claudio Reyna.

(And Keller would have made it to five if he hadn’t had a major falling out with Bora Milutinovic ahead of the 1994 World Cup, when Keller certainly was one of the three-best American keepers. Bora, however, took Tony Meola, Brad Friedel and Juergen Sommer. Keller went to the 1990, 1998, 2002 and 2006 WCs.)

5. And if … if … Landon can get to Brazil, and then he decides to keep playing and is performing at a high enough level four years hence, and the U.S. is in the tournament for the eighth consecutive time … he could share the “most World Cups” record with Lothar Matthaeus of Germany and Antonio Carbajal of Mexico.

Landon playing in Russia 2018 would probably be one of those good news/bad news situations, for U.S. soccer. It would mean the greatest international scorer in the country’s history is still playing at a high level … it would also mean that the country still had not produced a scorer/playmaker better than a 36-year-old Landon. And that would be a little scary.

“It’s hard for me to imagine, sitting here, that I’ll be able to walk in four years, much less play soccer,” he said to espn.com.

Brazil is Job 1. And probably the last job of that sort. But 2018 … let’s wait and see.