Don't Adu me any favors...Bodzilla said:
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Jamie Trecker / Fox Soccer Channel
Posted: 12 hours ago
If any other player in the MLS had carped about playing time, columnists across the country would have yawned.
But when the player is 16-year old Freddy Adu, well, the rules are a bit different.
This week has seen a non-stop barrage of press over Adu, his complaints, his subsequent suspension and the league in general. There may be no such thing as bad publicity, but some publicity is surely better than others.
Admittedly, some of this is karmic revenge on MLS' own publicists. They hyped Adu as the second coming of Pele before the kid could even get a learner's permit, and gleefully fanned any press they could get. This league also bent over backwards to sign him, arranging things so that Adu not only became the highest-paid player in the league but was close to his Mom's house.
Yet some of the hype about Adu is the media's fault, and I take issue with columnists who are willing to point fingers today without first examining themselves.
Why? Because I am one of the people who first fed the Adu machine. Today, I'm not too proud of that.
Three years ago, I was one of a handful of people who first saw Adu play with John Ellinger and the U-17 program in Florida. Only two American journalists (Jerry Trecker was the other) went to Guatemala for CONCACAF U17 qualifying to watch Adu demonstrate in an international setting exactly what he could do.
I was the guy who wrote, in the New York Times on February 11, 2003, that Adu was going to be a "sweet Valentine's Day gift to U.S. Soccer." That week, Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl would also run a piece on Adu.
Like us, Wahl went to see the kid in action after his name surfaced on soccer chat boards and came out in the national youth teams pool list.
Back then, the things that "mattered" about Adu had nothing to do with hype or sponsors. My Times story was actually held back two days and bumped off the front page of the sports section.
See, there had been another tale of a young prodigy the year before, and the Times had been burned badly after it was discovered that Little League pitching sensation Danny Almonte was over-age. I had several discussions with Neil Amdur, then the New York Times' sports editor, over whether or not I thought Adu really was a 13-year old kid. The Times and SI both went so far as to ask U.S. Soccer if Adu had consented to a bone scan and whether the Federation had performed one (U.S. Soccer did not, for the record).
The things soccer watchers cared about Adu at that time had nothing to do with MLS or Nike; most folks instead were chatting about whether Adu would gain citizenship (he did) and whether or not he would go to Europe. We knew teams in Europe had heard of him — one had even made a bid to sign him as a youth player — but folks weren't dreaming about Pepsi endorsements or the welfare of MLS. All of us — maybe naively — were thinking if Adu was good enough yet to play for the American national team.
In the end, the Times went with it, and I feel to this day that I was correct: Adu was a kid when I first saw him — a remarkably talented, poised kid — but, in the kindly words of a smiling Ellinger, "a knucklehead" all the same.
It seems almost quaint to think about Adu possibly being under-age, for today Adu is no kid. He is a marketing sensation, used to hawk soda, soccer and a league that is desperate for any attention it can get.
How things change, huh? Right now, columnists are eagerly calling Adu "immature" for complaining about his lack of playing time before the playoffs and opining that that MLS committed "fraud" (as Michael Wilbon put it in the Washington Post) with him.
But very few columnists are taking the time to examine their own motives. Just how moral is it for sports leagues, fans and the media to pin hopes on kids anyway?
Now, I'm no apologist for MLS. To be blunt, I think their marketing of him, while understandable, was a bit unseemly. I know every sport has its own prodigies — Michelle Wie and Tiger Woods, all those tennis and figure-skating wunderkinds, and LeBron James and Kobe Bryant have all had their fair share of headlines. But Adu was in a different boat: those aforementioned kids compete in sports which are already well established. MLS acknowledged this tacitly when it signed him: Don Garber tried to deflate expectations at his signing, saying: "Adu is not a savior, because soccer in America does not need saving."
Garber's words now appear disingenuous at best. The fact is, MLS exploited Adu at every juncture and gloried when attendances rose wherever he played. MLS, at one point, got so wrapped up in Adu-mania that they were forced to cut back on Adu's "off-field commitments" (their phrasing, not mine) after it became clear that Adu's game was suffering as a result.
Today, MLS is in a sticky spot. A lot of people bought those Adu jerseys and expect to see the kid play when they pay for their tickets. Columnists who don't follow soccer — but were sold on Adu by MLS' publicists — expect him to be playing all the time. Isn't he the next Tiger, the next Jordan, after all?
Was MLS wrong to sell him they way they did? Perhaps — the justification that he was well paid doesn't excuse the hawking of a kid. And were those of us in the media wrong to create this circus in the first place? Heck, yes.
The ugly truth is that few of us in the media actually bothered to go see the kid play when the talk began. Our collective laziness — which isn't just confined to soccer, by the way — left editors and columnists without any frame of reference. Most folks believed the publicity machine fueled by MLS, Pepsi and Nike. Most people writing about Adu today never experienced the FIFA Youth World Cup in Finland or any of Adu's many games with the under-17 program. Most of these folks don't regularly attend soccer games, period.
So, was Adu wrong to gripe? Probably not — heck, he's the one who's been told over and over again he's the second coming. Don't blame a kid who doesn't know any better — what else can we expect when we in the media who are so quick to point the finger, helped start this bandwagon in the first place?
If we are to blame MLS for hawking him, then we should also take the blame too. It's not fair to Adu, MLS or you, the readers to say now that we want off after we helped start things rolling.
There is one aspect of the Adu case that troubles me, however. MLS, so they tell me, was created to develop American players. And it has, to some extent.
Over the years, however, I have begun to think that this maxim was never meant to apply to all of MLS' players. (Just ask some of the Project-40 washouts — whom I'll introduce you to in a few weeks.) Sometimes I think developing American talent doesn't matter all that much to everybody — heck, Garber's currently offering up a team to Toronto to develop Canadian talent. However, I know MLS is a business (I also think Toronto would be a smart business move) and I know not everyone succeeds.
The problem though is this idea that winning titles that have little meaning outside the insular world of American soccer is more important than helping kids like Adu or Eddie Gaven or Clint Dempsey become players that can get noticed by the world at large.
This is the pressure that D.C.'s coach, Peter Nowak, is under — and it's a bit unfair to him and the youngest players in the game. Why hasn't someone piped up and said, "Y'know, one MLS Cup isn't as valuable as a full-blown star player with international appeal?" Why hasn't someone taken Nowak aside and told him that part of his job has to be to sell the sport? Why hasn't someone said that it's all right to lose some games if it means training players? Adu's timing may stink, but MLS has sold the game on his back. Is it so wrong now for him to ask to be taught?
I should have asked these questions three years ago.
But I will say this now: If our sport is going to hire kids, let's at least teach them how to be good at their jobs. Adu should play, and be judged on the field. If we really care about American soccer talent, then all of us should make good on it
