Stuck at the end of the bench for French team AS Monaco, a year after spending a season in purgatory in Portugal at Benfica, the career of U.S. teen “phenom” Freddy Adu is not exactly following according to plan, causing SI.com’s Greg Lalas to question what is best for the young starlet.
Before getting into solutions, Lalas first tried to put a finger on what went wrong with a player with such seemingly infinite promise, asking “How can a player with such obvious potential — anyone who watched the U-20 World Cup in 2007 could see it — not fulfill even a little bit of it? Can it be chalked up to the over-tactical defensiveness of Ligue 1? Disfavor with the manager? Playing out of position, as some have suggested? Or is it simply still too early to make any pronouncements?”
While admitting an Adu return to MLS “makes sense” and that “he needs to be playing regularly,” Lalas brings up the curious case of Landon Donovan and his failure to catch on in Europe as a cautionary tale of what not to do, imploring Adu to “prove once and for all that a young American player will not slink back to the comfortable arms of MLS when push comes to shove.”