Several pundits have noted that Landon Donovan’s name seems to draw all kinds of reactions from American soccer fans. Many of these are equally ambivalent about the 25-year-old striker, who last week won an unprecedented fourth Honda U.S. Player of the Year award, but most, if not all, would begrudgingly accept that Donovan is the country’s best soccer player. He is indisputably the most talented.
The San Bernardino Sun’s Nick Green says that that’s’ precisely why Donovan draws so much ire. Everyone knows he’s the country’s best player, yet has an irksome tendency to fade out of games — and some very important ones at that, notably the Americans’ World Cup opener against the Czech Republic last year. Others chide him for a “lack of toughness and determination” exemplified by his abrupt departure from Bayer Leverkusen in 2005. “To those,” Green says, Donovan is “a whiny, coddled, inconsistent, over-rated player squandering his natural ability to the detriment of the Galaxy and national team.”
Ouch. You can imagine those criticisms might hit hard. But the numbers don’t lie: Donovan, at 25, is just one penalty kick away from breaking the national team record of 34 international goals he shares with Eric Wynalda. He’s already the all-time assist leader. He was also unquestionably the best U.S. performer of the year, scoring nine goals and adding three assists, not to mention the Galaxy’s best player too, with seven goals and 11 assists in 22 matches.