PALO ALTO, Calif. — No American in the four years since soccer’s last World Cup has scored more goals in competition than Chris Wondolowski. Few of the other 29 players on the United States men’s national team’s provisional roster can match his story, either, partly because no others have scored three goals in an international game with their names misspelled on the back of their jerseys.

As the team convened at Stanford University on Wednesday for its final training camp before the June start of the 2014 World Cup, plenty of attention focused on Wondolowski, the late-blooming 31-year-old with an underdog’s tale.

His background is sure to elicit a lot of supporters, especially here. Wondolowski grew up in nearby Danville, Calif., and now stars for Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes.

“I knew my way here,” he said, referring to Wednesday’s commute, not his career’s serpentine route.

Not recruited out of high school and not a regular starter in M.L.S. until he was 27, Wondolowski is a goal-scoring machine and a league most valuable player. His tardy rise in American soccer has been compared to the American football ascent of the former quarterback Kurt Warner, the grocery clerk-turned-Super Bowl hero.