Much Adu

It's funny how this blogging thing works out sometimes.

For several days now I've been mentally cooking up a post about the predicament Americas' somewhat tarnished – and not-so-gently-aging – Golden Child of Soccer currently finds himself in, which was to be ever so-cleverly titled:

Much Adu About Nothing.

Among other things of course the title itself was to serve as a snarky response to those hundreds – perhaps thousands – of "mainstream media" pieces from six years ago, all of which were headed:

Much Adu About Freddy

It was like there was a previously unrecognized Triteness Virus which had seeped into the collective minds of Americas' copy clerks, and when we were still seeing the same headline two months later it only reinforced the impression.

In any case, as most of you know our beloved Wunderkind was rejected by a decidedly "unfancied" Swiss club – Scion – who had him in for a look-see and quickly tossed him back into the pond.

The coach there said that they were looking for "a 9 shirt" but that didn't seem to be the role he's cut out for. Since being a 9 shirt is just about all Fred has ever done I'm wondering what else the guy thought Adu is suited for, but no matter.

So with "Return to Sender" stamped on his forehead, Freddy tripped on back to Greece, where Aris Thessaloniki – the team who agreed to borrow him from Benfica – won't even allow him to do preseason work with the senior team who aren't in the country anyway.

And if anyone was still not getting the message, they made their intentions even clearer when they assigned Freddy's number to someone else. Reportedly, they also tried to send him back to Benfica but were told no. Or perhaps "hell no" would be more accurate.

So I intended to make some pithy comments regarding Freddys' Future Prospects, particularly vis a vis MLS and some of the articles I've been seeing that are full of "Freddy Back to MLS" sentiment, my main question being: who the hell would really want him?

But what with a million demands on my time this week – including the trip to Philadelphia for the Union-Crew tilt (about which more later) – I never had the chance, which turned out to be something of a good thing now that the rumors are rampant that Our Freddy will next be seen in a Galaxy uniform.

Perhaps that's what he was alluding to when he Tweeted last week:

"Hopefully some good news in the next couple days. I know I'm going to be praying. Until then I will be incognito."

Now I'm going to go ahead and assume that he realy meant "incommunicado" since otherwise I'd be forced to try and picture Adu walking around in a sluch hat and Groucho glasses.

(This is after all the same guy who, a couple weeks ago, informed his slowly dwindling but still extent fan base that he had just watched "the Saucerers' Apprentice") which, despite the obvious mistake was at least more interesting than his missive of a few days earlier:

"Just made the realest egg sandwich with some tomatoes and cheese"

Which of course leaves one gasping for an explanation of how one sandwich is rendered more "real" than another but I'm just not going there.)

One writer, who I won't link to because I already have a reputation as a mean guy, opined that "DC and New England" would be good places for Freddy to "take his talents" – to coin a phrase – although it's never made clear why he thinks that.

(Personally, I think those would be two utterly dreadful places for him to wind up.)

Still though, MLS is seemingly determined to not let it's players go overseas and fail and then have to hitch hike home (although presumably Adu has enough left from his handsome Benfica deal to at least fly standby).

Witness Danny Szetela, a player who has managed to alienate almost everyone who's ended up on a team with him and still got one more shot when Europe opened the bomb bay doors over the Atlantic.

So I suppose I should have known it was inevitable that we'd be seeing him around the league one of these days if for no other reason than nobody else wants him and MLS is like your Mom: no matter how badly you screw up, she'll always give you a meal and a bed.

And since a couple teams have been clearing space this week – Los Angeles and Columbus prominent among them – we knew that something or other was up, although Columbus seems to have signed someone from South America.

I mention the latter only to make the point that those are the only kinds of sides I would think could possibly bring him in; veteran, winning teams who don't need him.

A struggling club would desperately need him to produce, and we've seen how he handles that kind of pressure. If he's going to come, much betterhe should end up someplace where not only will he have to come off the bench for at least a while but, even better for him, nobody will give a crap if he's unhappy about it.

And I suppose when you look at it that way the absolute King of Not Giving a Crap What You Think is il Bruce, and there's not much question that anyone would be looking for Adu to be either a saviour – LA hardly needs one of those at the moment – or a media magnet, since this time around his name isn't going to fill many buildings, or if it does it won't happen twice.

So at the moment it appears that it's a good thing I didn't get a chance to write my "Who The Hell Would Want Adu?" piece a day or two before Los Nageles – or someone – signs the guy.

(Not that it's anything like a sure thing but on reflection it's exactly the kind of thing MLS World HQ in New York would work hard to engineer and I should have seen it coming.

As for his future in the league, I keep thinking of Kyle Martino.

Once upon a time Bruce Arena said publically that Martino was "the next USA 10 shirt" afer Claudio Reyna.

And, as his new FSC talk show, premiering next week, demonstrates, that didn't quite work out.

Martino had all kinds of moves and strokes and vision and tactical sense. Unfortunately, you didn't get much chance to see any of that because he was always laying on the ground where some opponent had planted him.

And that's the problem I fear we'll see with Fred. (Maybe if he lost the "Freddy" bit people would start to see him as something other than a 14 year old running around in the background while pele drinks the last Sprite).

In his case, everybody already knows what it takes to stop the guy: bang into him and he goes down like a hooker with late rent.

For his sake, I hope it works out. Really.

It's not his fault everyone told him at age 14 that he was the next big thing and he believed them.

I just hope for his sake that he's able to start over and make an honest attempt at finding a role that suits his game. Everybody wants to be the man, the guy, the one who rips the nets and gets the girls and the headlines.

But that's no longer Freddy.

If it ever really was.