CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Major League Soccer yesterday hitched its wagon to Freddy Adu, hoping the 14-year-old will bring the 8-year-old league unprecedented worldwide visibility.
Adu, who lives in Potomac with his family, became the youngest player in modern professional team sports when D.C. United selected him with the No.1 pick in the 2004 MLS SuperDraft.
Not only is Adu the youngest player in the league, the teenager is also the highest-paid, making $500,000 a season. Adu knows his sudden wealth may not sit well with rank and file players who make considerably less.
“I feel like I have a big X on my back with players’ salaries being released, but that’s part of the game,” Adu said. “If you want to achieve something, you’ve got to work hard for it. There’s going to be obstacles, and this is one of them. So I think it’s going to be a big challenge for me. and I’m ready for it.”
MLS commissioner Don Garber said the league is not billing Adu as a savior but as a great young talent who was eyed by some of the top clubs in the world such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Inter Milan.
MLS is going to ride Freddy fever as far as the personable teenager can take the 10-team league.
“In the long term, we do believe that Freddy will break through much of the clutter, if you will, that exists in sports today and give us some of the pop cultural appeal that the league has not been able to achieve for our now 81/2 years,” Garber said.
“We’ve never had the kind of attention in the non-sports press that we’ve had since Freddy signed with the league. Just the last two days, being on TRL [MTVs ’Total Recall Live], he’s being taped for ’60 Minutes,’ being interviewed for Sports Illustrated, a photo shoot for Vanity Fair, and things with Nickelodeon. This stuff is unprecedented for soccer and, quite frankly, it’s somewhat unprecedented in sport.”
Adu, who is in U.S. Soccer’s residency program in Bradenton, Fla., burst onto the international stage last spring at the Under-17 World Championships in Finland, when he scored four goals, including a hat trick against South Korea in the U.S. team’s first match.
Adu’s potential is unlimited. At 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, he’s already being compared to Pele, the Brazilian soccer legend. But MLS doesn’t want to raise expectations so high that Adu can’t possibly live up to his hype.
“He’s 14 years old, and I think we need to remind people that he’s 14 years old,” Garber said. “We have no doubt that in time he will be a great player in our league. From everything that we keep hearing, both from overseas and from our coaches and from our national team coaches, he has the potential to be a great player, but we want that to happen slowly.”
Forget it — not with ABC rolling into RFK Stadium on April3 to nationally televise United’s season opener against the defending MLS champion San Jose Earthquakes. The notion of bringing Adu along slowly and letting him develop on his own time probably won’t work, because world soccer fans want to see Adu play right now so they can formulate their opinions.
Peter Nowak, United’s coach, said Adu will have to earn his starting job in open competition during United’s two-week spring training in Bradenton, Fla. Adu will train exclusively with United and not the U-17s.
Adu was impressive playing alongside United teammate Bobby Convey at the U-20 World Championships in November as a left-flank midfielder, and United is looking at Adu to fill a hole in its midfield.
“I don’t think we’re going to throw him out there and let him play, I don’t think anybody can sit here today and say what’s going to happen,” said club president Kevin Payne. “We’re not going to know until he gets out there on the field with the rest of the team, and then Peter is going to have an opportunity to assess where he stands.
“If he is good enough to play, he’s going to play. We’re not going to hold him back artificially — we said that from the beginning. If he’s not quite ready, physically or whatever, then we’ll be a little more cautious.”
Adu said his first aim is to first win acceptance from his teammates.
“It’s going to be hard,” he said. “I just want to earn the respect of my teammates and then take it from there. I’m not going into this season expecting to, like, dominate or get right into the starting lineup — that’s more for the 2005 season, when I’ll have more expectations for myself.”
Notes — RFK Stadium is one of three finalists to play host to MLS Cup 2004, along with Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., and Columbus Crew Stadium in Ohio. … Four University of Maryland players were drafted. Defender Clarence Goodson of Springfield was selected by the Dallas Burn with the seventh pick; defensive midfielder Scott Buete of Bowie was taken by the Chicago Fire with the ninth pick; midfielder Sumed Ibrahaim went to the Fire in the second round (20th overall); and defender Seth Stammler was picked in the second round (18th) by the MetroStars. Brown forward Adom Crew of Columbia, Md., was taken with the first pick in the fifth round (41st) by the Crew. … United drafted Kevin Ara, a midfielder from Harvard; Joshua Gros, a midfielder from Rutgers; and Kevin Hudson, a midfielder from SMU.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.