Zack Steffen is back home in Downingtown, a place that still means a lot to the U.S. men’s goalkeeper

Zack Steffen’s travels have led him to call a lot of places home in his career as a soccer player: England, Germany, MLS, and all manner of stadiums with the U.S. men’s national team.

But on those rare occasions when his travels take him to his actual hometown, Downingtown, it feels different — and still special.

So when he talked with young soccer players Wednesday night at the United Sports complex, it mattered a little less that he missed last fall’s World Cup. Or that his loan spell at Middlesbrough in England’s second division, where he played regularly and was truly welcomed, is over.

Or that he was walking with a crutch as his right knee heals from a recent meniscus operation that knocked him out of this summer’s Concacaf Nations League final four and will keep him sidelined into the fall.

For a moment, just being home was enough.

“I don’t come back home as much as I’d like, but whenever I get a break, I try to come back home,” Steffen said as he stood on land where he spent a lot of his childhood, kicking soccer balls around with friends after school until he got very good at it.

“Family for me, and home, where I grew up, holds a big place in my heart,” he said. “It’s just a place where I can go back and reset, and soccer doesn’t matter. The outside world, I can just kind of shut off for a little bit, and it’s just a nice kind of reset and peaceful time.”

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Steffen’s visit was more than a social call. United Sports named a new turf field in honor of the 28-year-old and his charitable foundation, VOYCENOW.

“It’s surreal, honestly — it’s like a full-circle moment,” he said. “It’s a very proud and humbling experience and situation that you can do a lot of good up on this field for the next generation.”

Steffen knew that some of his national team colleagues from the Philly area have been back home lately, too: Brenden and Paxten Aaronson in Medford, Burlington County, and Mark McKenzie in Bear, Del. Downingtown is far enough from both that there wasn’t time to get together. But Steffen admitted he wanted to spend as much time as possible with his family and old friends.

“We just come home so infrequently, and then it’s so short and goes by so fast,” he said.

Anyone who needed further evidence of a strong family bond found it down on the field, where Steffen’s mother, Stefanie, handed out T-shirts, soccer balls, and energy bars.

“For me and for our family, what he’s doing with VOYCENOW is so much more significant and bigger than anything he’s doing on the soccer field,” she said. “The fact that as a 28-year-old, he comes home and wants to still be with the family and his four younger siblings, and give back to his community, and just be present and around with all of us, it’s pretty awesome.”

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As for that scoped knee, Steffen said it’s healing “slowly but surely.” He had cartilage cleaned out and had a platelet-rich plasma injection.

“It was needed, and this was the best time to do it,” he said, later adding, “Hopefully this is the last time I have to go underneath the knife.”

That would be a fine thing for a player with a long history of knee problems.

The operation upended Steffen’s plans to leave Manchester City this summer, which he told the club about before revealing it publicly in late March. Now, he said Wednesday, unless a full-blown transfer gets done this summer, he plans to return to Manchester and finish his rehab there before seeking a move in the winter transfer window.

“They’ve been really good,” he said of City’s medical staff, “getting the surgery in as soon as possible and then the rehab and everything. They’ve taken great care of me.”

But a summer move may yet be in the cards. The English newspaper the Telegraph reported Tuesday that Leicester City is pursuing Steffen to help it return to the Premier League after being relegated in May. The Radio station Talksport followed that Wednesday with a claim that the Foxes are “set to complete the signing” of Steffen.

This was news to him.

“All my friends told me about this Leicester [report], but I haven’t heard anything from my agent,” he said. “So my focus is just to get healthy and build a foundation of strength … and then whatever else the Lord has for me, I’ll let him plan out.”

» READ MORE: Zack Steffen's last interview with The Inquirer in March

Meanwhile, his mother will make the most of his time at home, then travel abroad to see him when she can. But she allowed herself a stray thought as the sun shone: a hope to one day see Zack suit up for his hometown Union.

Though he grew up in the team’s youth academy, he has never played for the Union professionally. He went to college at Maryland, then turned pro with Germany’s Freiburg. That story has long been trailed by allegations that the Union didn’t want to compete with Freiburg’s offer.

Steffen spent a year and a half in Germany, and the time did not go well. So in 2016, he moved to MLS to join the Columbus Crew. (The manager who happily signed him, Gregg Berhalter, is the same one who left him home from Qatar six years later.)

It took a while for the Union to celebrate their role in developing him. Nowadays, Jim Curtin is happy to do so — not least because he coached Steffen on the club’s Under-17 team in 2012.

The time when Steffen would join — or rejoin — the Union won’t come for a while. He’s still got plenty of his peak left in him. But a mother is a mother, no matter her son’s age.

“Let’s get him playing here,” she said with just the right mix of hope and affection.

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