Asamoah's determined volley knocks out the Americans

The Africans, a team known for their excellent ball movement, surprised the US with a change of pace. In the opening minutes of the overtime, pegged back by the aggressive Americans, Andrew Ayew either followed instructions given by Ghanian manager,Ratomir Dujkovic, during the short break before the restart, or made a desperate or  box to box clearance.   In either case, Asamoah Gyan outraced Jay DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra to the ball, played it off his chest and absorbed the shoulder check of a desperate Bocanegra.  Then,  somehow retaining his balance , he lashed a half volley over the head and hands of Tim Howard and under the crossbar.  It was a true moment in the competition, glorious for the Ghanians and stunning for the Yanks.

There is no question the American players believed in themselves.  The list of adversities overcome in the past year is inspiring, to say the least.  After losing the opening two matches in their group at the Confederations Cup, they manhandled Egypt 3-0 to advance to the semi-final, stunned the world’s #1, Spain, in that contest, and then jumped out to a 2-0 victory over the Brazilians, in the finals, before running out of gas.

Returned, but not 100%

Sorely missed

Several months later, while being driven home home from a private celebration after the team’s World Cup qualifying draw versus Costa Rica, their sensational striker Charlie Davies, was critically injured in a fatal car accident.  Davies, with a herculean effort, had Sam’s Army holding it’s breath until the final cut date for the 23 man roster, hoping he’d play in the World cup.  Sadly, he fell just short of being ready.

Defender Oguchi Onweyu suffered a serious knee injury in that Costa Rica match and, subsequently, saw no action until the warmup friendlies for the tournament.  ”Gooch” was able to play his way into a semblance of fitness that allowed him to contribute to the US effort in the group stage.  Those contributions were inconsistent, though, and he wasn’t fit enough to be relied upon for a full 90 minutes.

Tim Howard

In the tournament itself, the Yanks’ resolve was tested through their own consistently slow starts, as well as two exceedingly horrendous officiating decisions.  Still, exhibiting the famous never say die American fighting spirit, they refused to give up.  Led by timely contributions from the more stellar players in the side, Tim Howard, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley and, here and there, Jozy Altidore, the US actually won the group over England, on the second tiebreaker, goals scored.  Still, it’s not wise to test fate too often and after falling behind twice against Ghana, the Americans ran out of last minute heroics.

Landon Donovan

In the aftermath, most fans, of the US and the game in general, will credit them with having had a successful tournament.  That’s the beauty of being a second class citizen.  No one expects too much of you.  If those fans were to put a microscope to the US performance, though, they might not be so forgiving.

While the roster could not be called deep, the Americans had enough talent to do damage.  Further, winning the group provided them with a much easier path into the nether regions of the tournament.  Tim Howard proved time and again that he is worthy of comparison to the likes of Julio Cesar, Iker Casillas and Gianluigi Buffon.   Landon Donovan came into his own during a springtime loan spell at Everton and contributed late heroics against Slovenia, Algeria and Ghana.  Finally, Clint Dempsey’s timely goals in Fulham’s incredible journey to the Europa League final were a harbinger of his efforts against England and in drawing the penalty versus Ghana.

Clint Dempsey

The trio were supported well by Michael Bradley, Bocanegra and DeMerit in the middle of the pitch, Steve Cherundolo at right back and, at times, Altidore up front. Benny Feilhaber, coming off the bench, changed the course of more than one match for the US, too.

That being said, there were major weaknesses in the squad, by World Cup standards.

Altidore’s inconsistency and lack of pace, for one.  He’s essentially a poor man’s Emile Heskey.  I actually admire Heskey’s abilities, don’t get me wrong. Still, I know a backhanded compliment when I write one.   Against a smaller side, like Algeria, Altidore was able to outmuscle his opponents and have a strong impact on the match.  With the bigger, more physical Africans, he was less effective and was constantly run down when pursuing through balls.

... you are the weakest link!

Jonathan Bornstein...

Moreover, the US is incredibly vulnerable on the left side.  Dempsey is their best option but has a propensity for cutting into the middle.  Jonathan Bornstein, the preferred left back, is too timid to overlap and fill the empty space and too inept to defend effectively, even though he stays well back.

Is this lack of width what did the US in?  Ultimately, I suppose that could be argued but there is a far more glaring deficiency within the USMNT. The tactical nous of the coach, Bob Bradley, is seriously lacking.

After noticing a trend in the American matches, I went back and compared Bradley’s substitution patterns to the rest of the teams in the competition.  Combined, the other 31 nations made substitutions in the 1st half or before the restart approximately 12% of the time.  The rate was slightly higher for the teams that were eliminated and lower for those who progressed (not counting the US).  Still, the difference was slight, within 5% of the overall average...

For the Americans, the percentage of early substitutions was a whopping 45%.   You read that correctly.  Almost half of their substitutions were made before the second half began.  In 3 out of 4 matches, Bradley felt the need to make drastic changes in the early going.

That might be shrugged off as being a result of the all too typical slow starts of the USMNT. It’s something they’ve endured not just in this tournament but throughout Bradley’s tenure.  The persistence of that pattern suggests that the answer lies with the coaching. The heart of the squad, in repeatedly coming from behind, further implies that it isn’t a problem of mental toughness.  To my mind, the crux of the problem is Bradley’s match planning.

In the interests of fairness, it should be noted that there were three other countries with unusual numbers.

Of those, only Chile made it to the elimination rounds.  Their manager, the mad scientist, Marcello Bielsa, is famous for tinkering with his lineups both during and between matches.  His 4 early changes can be put down to three things. He made two switches at the half, searching for a path to goal against the Swiss, who hadn’t conceded in the better part of forever.  Then against Spain, Chile found themselves down 0-2, quite against the run of play.  Needing to get back in the match and unfairly down a man, Bielsa wanted to inject a spark into his side, while simultaneously compensating for the manpower disadvantage.

Both Greece and Italy, the latter with its mind boggling  5 first half changes in 3 matches, were constantly playing from behind.  Noted for their defensive prowess, both clubs had not lived up to billing and lacked the offensive firepower to compensate.  Seeking answers, each manager, but Marcello Lippi, especially, went to the bench early and often.  There was nothing there for them, however, and the 2 nations were doomed to failure.

Having to make too many corrections

Even with the prior mention of a weak left side, the USA, on the other hand, did have several tactical options within reach.  So gifted, Bradley was not one to trot out the same eleven men match after match.  He changed it up dependent upon whom the US was playing.  Unfortunately, the numbers suggest his choices were wrong far too often.

Throughout qualification, he has favoured Jonathan Bornstein at left back. Bornstein rarely ventures forward, although he is a hero in Honduras, after his tying goal against Costa Rica in the final qualification match put that country through (That Cost Rica match has turned out to be a critical moment in time for the Americans on their World Cup journey).  On defense, Bornstein, who plays for Chivas USA in MLS, gave speedy World Cup wingers far too much room, fearing his own lack of pace, and thus allowed his marks free rein to send dangerous crosses into the box.

In the group stage, Bradley did go to Bocanegra at left back but Onweyu’s aggravated knee required that the Rennes man come back into the middle.  Still, there were other options in central defence, most notably Clarence Goodson, that could have allowed the captain to remain on the outside.  Bradley, however, is reluctant to trust to new players to the squad, no matter their form.

Buddle buried the Aussies but his admirer, Findley, was somehow favoured

Despite that reticence, Bradley did put a lot of trust in Real Salt Lake man, Robbie Findley, to use his speed to stretch defences.  Findley, who last year played a major part in Salt Lake’s MLS championship run, is fast.  The trouble is, when you put the ball at his feet, he doesn’t know what to do with it.

A better option would have been LA Galaxy’s Edson Buddle.  The mercurial veteran has a shade less pace, but makes up for it with a matchmaker’s passion  for introducing the ball to the back of the net. Seven goals in the Galaxy’s 1st five matches and 2 more against Australia, just prior to the tournament, confirmed his form.  If that wasn’t enough, he plays and practices daily with Landon Donovan in Los Angeles.  There’s a natural understanding between the pair, yet during the competition, Bradley showed no confidence in him.

Waiting in the wings?

Fans and pundits always second guess managers.  Typically,we have far less experience and are certainly unaware of the goings on during match preparation.  In this case, however, the evidence is clear.  Bob Bradley has reached his limits as the US coach.  The talent is there for the US to go deeper in the tournament but a new hand is needed at the helm.

In California, there is a man with experience as a national and top European club manager, who understands and embraces American training methods, yet also has a sound tactical mind.

Perhaps it is time for Sunil Gulati and the USSF to seriously court the services of Juergen Klinsmann.

On Saturday, the Americans booked their World Cup berth with a 3-2 victory away to Honduras. Five days later, on home ground at Washington’s RFK stadium, they were down 2-0 to Costa Rica at half-time, only to tie the game with a Jonathan Bornstein equaliser in the dying seconds – meaning that they will arrive in South Africa next year as the winners of the CONCACAF Qualifying Group. In between those two epic games, Charlie Davies, one of the great young hopes of American soccer, endured horrific injuries in a car accident in which a female passenger was killed.

Airlifted to hospital in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Davies thankfully survived, but his doctor’s report was grim. The 23 year old suffered a lacerated bladder and fractures to the tibia and femur bones in his right leg, as well as facial fractures and a left elbow fracture. Translated into career terms, when Davies left the field in the 80^th minute of the Honduras game, he may have done so for the last time. Recovery could take a year, effectively ruling him out of the World Cup.

Davies’s breathtakingly cruel fate was not lost on US soccer fans. At the Costa Rica game, the crowd held up signs  marked simply with ’9′ – his shirt number. Fellow forward Jozy Altidore made sure that the spectators and the TV cameras knew that underneath his own shirt, he wore another bearing both the number 9 and Davies’s name. Outside the stadium, too, the spontaneous outpouring of sympathy – for example, the thousands of emails sent to charliedavies9@yahoo.com – is a measure of the respect which Americans have for athletes and a tangible sign that soccer really is putting down roots here.

While Davies made his debut for the national team in 2007, it was this year, at the FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa, that he first showed what he was capable of. Routed in their first two matches by Italy and Brazil respectively, the Americans turned up to their match against Egypt probably expecting to be flying home shortly after. As it turned out, they soared to a 3-0 victory largely spurred by Davies, who scored one of the goals. As they prepared to face Spain, Vincente del Bosque, the Spanish coach, specifically cited Davies as a threat. “The other day this player we did not know, Davies, played a very good match,” he told a press conference.

The US went on to beat David Villa, Fernando Torres and their teammates 2-0 in a match in which Davies was outstanding. For a while, it seemed as though they might win the tournament. In what may well be the best 45 minutes of US football ever played, the Americans closed the first half of the final 2-0 up against Brazil. Notwithstanding this titanic effort, the Brazilians, presumably smarting from a Dunga lecture at half-time, netted the requisite three goals to win.

Nonetheless, the US returned from South Africa looking like a serious prospect – and Davies, who plays for the French club Sochaux, joined Altidore, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Oguchi Onyewu and Michael Bradley in the upper echelons of a young, enthused and purposeful American side. In the wake of his ghastly accident, it’s no wonder that some soccer writers, like Grahame Jones in the LA Times, have reached the gloomy judgment that Davies is irreplaceable. Donovan is needed in midfield, DaMarcus Beasley is well past his prime, half of the top scorers in Major League Soccer are foreign nationals; what on earth is coach Bob Bradley to do?

For now, Bradley is trying to balance the expectations of his team with the pressure of the World Cup – and particularly the group stage. “We can only control this situation when we get there,” Bradley said, following the Costa Rica victory. “You have to be able to play those three games in a certain way. You have to adapt after the first game.”

Arguably, the adapting has to begin now, when the likelihood of a World Cup without Charlie Davies – a player whom Bradley praised for understanding “the total responsibility on the field in terms of not only being somebody who has speed and can break through the defense, but somebody who has to combine it with his teammates” – is just sinking in.

For many years his arrival in the Premier League did not seem at all likely. Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Sunderland all attempted to secure Friedel’s services, but failed to obtain an elusive work permit and on all three occasions the moves collapsed. Sandwiched inbetween those disappointments he engineered moves to IF Brondby following his failure to engineer a move to Keegan’s Newcastle, then Galatasary after facing similar disappointment with Sunderland where he would work with Graeme Souness for the first time. In 1996 he moved back to the MLS with Columbus Crew and the following season was included in the MLS team of the year was named the MLS goalkeeper of the year. It painted a frustrating picture, one of a goalkeeper with abundant potential, his persistent suiters testament to it, but unable to secure the opportunity to fulfil it. Hope was to come from Liverpool, who, impressed by Friedel’s MLS performances, decided to purchase his contract for $1.7 million in 1997. Again a work permit was denied, but finally one was granted on appeal and Friedel secured the move to the Premier League that he had sought for so long.

The role of goalkeeper is a strange one, one where Edwin Van der Sar can receive as much credit for a run of 13 games without conceding a goal as Shay Given for limiting a rampant Hamburg side to just 3 goals in Germany as well as countless heroic if slightly joyless performances for Newcastle. At the highest level it is about consistency, attention and alertness. Van der Sar will often have to make one or two saves a game, for half of Manchester United’s home games he is almost a complete bystander to the action. His quality is that when he is required to make those crucial saves more often that not he does. Lower down the league those qualities are still important, but there is more action and endurance. Goals are condeded more frequently, defenders are less reliable. There is generally more to do, keepers can concede one, two, even three goals and still have had a good game. Finding out where they fit between those two extremes has made players’ careers, Jussi Jakelinen, David James and Shay Given are just three examples, and Brad Friedel is another. Having struggled at Liverpool for three seasons, making just 35 appearances and playing second fiddle to Sander Westerveld for the majority of his stay he was eventually reuinted with Graeme Souness at Blackburn, the man who had taken him to Galatasaray. It was there he made his name as a battling, all action player with real quality, first in helping the side win promotion in 2001 and then by earning inclusion in the Premier League XI in 2003 after keeping 15 clean sheets for the club. Throughout the latter part of his career he has been the benchmark for consistency, holding the record for consecutive league appearances of 182. Few, if any, goalkeepers in the league could claim to match his consistently outstanding performances which have coincided with both Blackburn and now Aston Villa enjoying their most successful seasons in over a decade.

Yet Friedel is not the toast of all American football supporters. There is a common sentiment that he has turned his back on the MLS, that he showed little interest in playing for the national side unless he was garanteed to start and that although his ability was undoubtedly more than of Kasey Keller, it was the latter that was more revered by American supporters as having given more back to American football. Keller, incidentally, is still playing – at the newly formed Seattle Sounders and will be 40 this November. His another illustrious career best saved for another day. This is not an argument I feel holds much weight. Friedel has opened a soccer school in Ohio which he visits annually and in interviews regularly makes reference to ex USA keeper Tim Rice as his inspiration for getting in to the game. He has never made it his aim to disregard his roots, but at the same time has maintained a desire to become a better player rather than a pin up for the MLS. In interviews Friedel has talked about how he is considered too English to be American at home, and too American to be English at his club. It was a comment made in jest, but it must be a difficult scenario and perhaps the price for progress, a feeling of not fully belonging anywhere. It has become common place in the modern game, players pusuing their personal goals at the exspense of patriotism, Deco, now of Portugal, Eduardo, now of Croatia and perhaps Almunia, a future England number one, are all good examples.

But the blame should not like at Friedel’s door that he plays in a flawed system. It is not his fault that the only way to improve and reach the pinnacle of his profession was to leave the MLS and play in more prosperous leagues further a field. It is an unfortunate reality that it is not the USA that can decide when it has produced a world class player, it is Europe. There have already been several false dawns in that respect, notably Adu and Convey in recent seasons who eventually failed to meet expectation at Benfica and Fulham respectively. Without these players proving they can play to the European standard, American claims regarding the quality of their players have no credibility, they are little more than smoke and hyperbole. European football is utterly dominant at present, it has the world’s best player, the world’s best international team, and officially, albeit via a competition which isn’t universally respected, the world’s best club side, not to mention all the money. By moving to the Premier League, establishing himself there and consistently proving himself to be one of the best in his position, Friedel might have isolated himself from his homeland, but he has built himself a credibility in this country that gives him good reason to claim to be the greatest player the USA has ever produced, even if he is not appreciated to the same extent at home. There are other contenders, Eric Wynalda, Tab Ramos and Hugo Perez to name but three, but none of them could claim to have performed with such consistent quality in such a challenging environment over such a long period of time. Friedel has survived the fitness revolution that Arsene Wenger brought with him from Monaco in the late 1990′s, and the increased standard of play in the league which has increased its presence in the European game in recent seasons, culminating in his part in Aston Villa’s credible effort to gatecrash the top four this season. If anything these factors, in correlation to Friedel’s increasing age, should have been a recipe for weaker and weaker performances. Instead the opposite has happened, Friedel, if anything, has improved. He isn’t the posterboy for football that America would like, he isn’t their first David Beckham or Ronaldinho, he isn’t bleach blonde highlights, good looks and bags of tricks, but he is the best player to come out of America so far because he simply has a stronger combination of natural talent and an inclination to work and improve than anyone from the country who has gone before him.

I apologise, there seems to be an issue with commenting on articles, but I will address the ones that have been raised here.

The best American outfield player?

Reyna isn’t rated as highly at home because he doesn’t play quite as consistently for the national side which is when they see him play the most, but he’s certainly maintained a good level of play in the Premier League over the years which, as was also the case for Friedel, is a good indicator of a talented player who can produce over a long period of time. Donovan has talent, clearly, but is wasting it playing at LA Galaxy who haven’t even qualified for the MLS playoffs since 2005. From what I gather his spell at Bayern Munich hasn’t been hugely successful, unfortunately it has coincided with the team playing badly, sacking the manager and struggling to qualify for the Champions League. Alexei Lalas was a pioneer, he made a name for himself at Padova in Serie A when it was still the best league in Europe. Right now this is really the basis for success for these players, what they have done to progress American football abroad. He set the standard first and showed that Americans could play at that level. Friedel’s was a bigger achievement because he’s older, at the pinnacle of his position and has been there for longer than Lalas was. In terms of natural ability I’d probably go for Perez, but he didn’t play very many games and only showed in flashes for the national side what he could do. He’s what I would call in modern terms a Youtube player, a player that everyone lauds based on a highlights video and doesn’t look at the full picture. If he were around now in the revamped MLS perhaps he could have achieved more, who knows? In terms of significance, perhaps Lalas was the most important. He was one of the first widely known American players abroad, albeit because of his hair, and set the bar for the rest. I don’t think he had tremendous ability, but he was a great advert for the rebirth of American football. All the arrivals since, McBride, Dempsey, Spector owe, in part, a little to Alexei Lalas. None of these players are what the Americans want, of course, they want their own Ronaldo or Kaka, but the creation of an increasing conveyor built of Premier League quality players is something that shouldn’t be undervalued, especially for a league as young as theirs.

Brazil were the only country to make an official bid for the 2014 tournament after Columbia withdrew and an Argentinian bid never materialised. South Africa’s preparations for the 2010 tournament have been hampered by doubts as to whether the stadia and transport links will be completed in time. It is no coincidence that the end of FIFA’s ill fated rotation policy has coincided with a massive increase in potential bidders this time around. It is a policy that was conceived with good intentions but has resulted in limiting competition for tournaments which has lowered the general standards of bids and coerced nations in to showing interest when there was none.

Brazil are a prime example – a nation with a greater population than that of all the other South American nations combined who were viewed as the country most capable of sustaining a bid for the tournament, and it has been one beset with problems. Its stadiums are dilapidated (the legendary Maraccana in particular), its transport links inadequate and its league awash with corruption. FIFA have attempted to avoid Europe dominating the bidding process by making countries from the continent that have hosted the last tournament ineligible for the next two. Perhaps this is the best solution. The tournament will still rotate, but there will be more competition and the tournament will be better for it.

It would be a huge surprise if one of the European bids didn’t succeed. By 2022 it will have been 16 years since Germany hosted the event, and for the continent that is used to getting its own way and has all the money and all the players, that is long enough – especially as a European nation has never won a World Cup outside of the continent. I suspect that given the uncertainty regarding the two upcoming tournaments, FIFA will vote for safety and give the 2018 event to a safe pair of hands and the 2022 event to one of football’s emerging markets such as Australia, Indonesia or the USA. If the last century was about Europe and South America, this may well be about Asia, Africa and North America. Sepp Blatter has already stated that given that both the 2010 and 2014 events will be held in the southern hemisphere Australia would be well advised to concentrate on the 2022 event, and as victory for a European bid in 2018 would mean ineligability for 2022, the USA might be wise to look towards Australia, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea as their main rivals.

Speaking about the USA’s bid, Sunil Gilati, president of the US Soccer Federation, said that

We are determined to finish what we started in 1994. We are the most diversified nation in the world.

If Nigeria and Ghana played each other, it would sell out. If Australia played Costa Rica, it would sell out. When we staged a third-placed play-off between Sweden and Bulgaria in 1994 there were 85,000 people there. My point is that this is not a question of fearing any country. We think we’d have a great bid, great structure and a great landscape.’ In response to the obvious claims from critics that the tournament has no place in a country with no natural market for football, their argument appears to be this – we have a population comprising of people from hundreds of different countries worldwide, they may not support MLS, but they support football. Whether Australia would be happy to be part of the USA’s display of global representation rather than holding the tournament themselves is debatable.

However in recent years we have seen how much FIFA enjoy playing God. If it was simply a case of choosing the country that would put on the biggest and glitziest show, there wouldn’t be many candidates. But it isn’t. FIFA want a country to host it that really needs it, where it will leave a legacy and increase the popularity of the game. As England found when their campaign for the 2006 bid failed so spectacularly, delusions of grandeur can send a bid to its knees – just look at how quickly they have tried to dismiss their early favourites tag this time after their ‘football is coming home’ pitch crashed and burned so catastrophically in Zurich in 2006. Australia may only have only five stadiums which meet FIFA’s requirement at present whilst the USA can boast over twenty, but their decision will be made on the basis of which bid they like, not whether either nation could host an event with a week’s notice. It is for this reason that the bidding process takes place so far before the opening ceremony commences. It seems like common sense, but FIFA has shown itself to have evolved with the times since the turn of the century, taking a few risks along the way – firstly by taking the tournament to Asia for the first time, then to Africa, also for the first time, despite concerns regarding crime, infrastructure and stadia.

If the USA want to win either tournament they need to focus on how far football has come there since 1994 rather than how much they have built. They need to remove any sense of self coronation as ‘the only choice’ and come up with a bid that portrays a nation hungry for football and, in many ways, convince the world that they are wrong about the American game. Justified or not, there is a sense that if football was going to take off then it would have happened by now. That is another article entirely, but it is something the USA must deal with when they compete with countries such as Japan and South Korea where popularity is growing at a phenomenal rate. Is the basis of this bid going to be that the USA can provide best canvas for the world’s footballing talent, or that they want to spark base interest in the game at home? Will the precedent of 1994 work in their favour or against them? It will be a fascinating process, and once which I will write about again when the bids begin to take shape.

He is currently on loan at AS Monaco, who have an option to make the deal permanent at the end of the season but almost certainly won’t, and has made just nine appearances this season, scoring no goals. Before that he was at Benfica, his first attempt to crack Europe, where, after a promising start, he made eleven league appearances, scoring two goals. Strange, really, that just three years ago Adu had only recently had a trial at Manchester United, which would eventually come to nothing, and it seemed more a question of which club would win his signature rather then whether one would want it.

Unfortunately, times have changed – Adu was sold to Real Salt Lake, a move orchestrated by Adu who saw his best position as an attacking midfielder or striker, not on the right side of midfield where D.C coach Petr Nowak had been playing him. ‘It is never easy to part with players, especially one like Freddy,’ Nowak said at the time. ‘Freddy desired to play a different role than the one we offered here at D.C., so we hope this move can aid that wish’. Less than a year later Adu skipped a pre season match with the club to board a plane to Benfica and a day later the deal was done. So how has Freddy Adu gone from one of the most sought after teenagers in Europe to a player about to turn 20 and searching for his third club in as many years?

A large part of the problem is that the MLS seems ill equipped to deal with promising young players – Adu isn’t their first potential superstar. Bobby Convey broke in to the DC United side in 2000 as a 16 year old, preceding Adu as the youngest player to play in the league. Since then, after an initial move to Tottenham Hotspur collapsed due to problems obtaining a work permit for the player, a disappointing spell with Reading which was hampered by injuries has recently seen Convey return to the MLS with San Jose Earthquakes after being released by the Championship club in February. Despite producing a number of players who have been successful in the Premiership and other European Leagues, few have been flair players. Fit, dependable strikers like Marcus DaBeasley and Brian McBride as well as the evergreen Brad Friedel have forged successful if unspectacular careers, but none have the natural skill of Adu. There is a stark contrast between the attitude towards player development in the MLS and in the South American Leagues. For Brazillian clubs, their players are all they have. They are their prize assets, their primary source of income – even more so than that received from television rights. It is in their interest to develop their players as well as they can to maximise transfer fees and maintain their reputation – and of course it has the knock on effect of making them more competitive domestically, albeit in a permanent state of flux as they never know what next season’s team will be.

The MLS is quite different, it is trying to establish itself in a country already fixated by the glitz and galmour of the NFL and NBA. These players aren’t just players, they are working advertisements for an entire game. When Manchester United signed nine year old Rhain Davis in 2007 on the basis of a DVD, the contrast was clear; the club quickly released a statement cofirming that Davis was a member of their youth academy and that they would not comment on individuals. There have been no new stories since. Adu has been filmed, interviewed and followed since he became a teenager. Perhaps he has simply had too much expectation heaped upon his young shoulders. The MLS continually attempted to boost attendances and the profile of the league by promoting their newest phenomenon, initially attendences rose, especially when D.C travelled to away fixtures, but those new attendees rarely returned when the Freddy Adu phenomenon could not meet with expectation. Details of his development as a player since he broke in to the DC United first team as a 14 year old have been under constant media scrutiny. In his second season with D.C United he was suspended for one game for complaining to the local media about his lack of playing time. All of the questions that would usually have been discussed in private, notably whether at 5″6 he would be physically strong enough to compete as well as his infamous temprement, have been analysed continually by sports journalinsts for the length of his short career. His coaches seemed to struggle to prepare him adequately for the bigger leagues he seemed destined for. But if Adu seems petulant to a European audience, it is only a result of the way in which the MLS has moulded him in to the role of soccer superstar. He believes his own hype, and who can blame him? It is all he has ever known.

At 19, Adu is fast approaching a pivotal point in his career. The player who Internazionale offered a six figure sum for as a 10 year old is running out of opportunities to prove he is capable of fulfilling the enormous hype and promise heaped on his shoulders as a young teenager.

It is rumoured that AS Monaco will opt not to take up their option to buy Adu at the end of the season and his next destination may be Genoa. The European leagues are awash with foreign imports that have struggled to make their mark and whose failure will receive far less column inches than Adu. His ascent to the top has been a flurry of hyperbole, now he must prove there is substance to the rave reviews or his descent back to the MLS will be just as hasty.