A savior can’t do his thing

Peter Nowak says Freddy Adu must earn his minutes.

Ha-ha. That is a good one.

Nowak is hard core. Right. Adu must earn his minutes. Stop it, coach. You are killing everyone.

Here is the thing: Adu is not obligated to earn anything. He is the league, the owner of it. It might as well be called the Freddy Adu League instead of Major League Soccer.

Adu has been billed as the savior of soccer in America. He is 14 years old. Or 34 years old. It depends on who is evaluating the lines on his face. No matter. His 14 years fit nicely with the overall packaging. He is being paid like the savior, at least by the standards of the operation, and he is being marketed like the savior.

Adu is the only reason to follow the league. Come see Freddy play, the league implores. He is our LeBron James. He will take us from nowhere on the sports landscape to the cusp of relevance. This is the strategy anyway.

Nowak must have missed the league’s memo on this.

He is still thinking. Quiet, please, while he evaluates the development of Adu in practice. Nowak is too much.

Play the kid, coach. We can relate to your Coaching 101 principles. But this is not about principles. This is about the league’s survival. This is about soccer in America.

It was the sport of the ’70s. It was the sport of the ’80s. Well, you get the idea. Soccer is the sport that is still waiting to have its moment in America.

Yes, we know. This is America’s fault, one nation’s inability to comprehend the nuances of the game. The rest of the globe embraces soccer like nothing else.

We see 1-0 and have to slap ourselves awake. This is the old charge that misses the obvious, which is: Soccer is a big-time sport at the youth league level in America. It has been for a long time. Lots of those one-time kids are cash-packing adults now. What happened to them? Where did they go? They did not wind up supporting soccer, we know that. And they certainly understand the nuances of the game. Why haven’t they been filling RFK Stadium to capacity level the last few years?

Soccer tries to avoid answering these questions.

Soccer’s adherents are truly passionate. Give them that. Their passion is stoked by the strong sense of being the underdog. Football. Basketball. Baseball. NASCAR. Golf. Tennis. Hockey. Can we mention soccer now?

But this year, it is different. Soccer has arrived in America, along with Adu. Or so we have been told.

Fred-dy. Fred-dy. Fred-dy.

Only now the D.C. United coach is not following the script.

Adu is nursing a bum ankle, and he is new to all this, and the coach must be fair to all the players.

Here is what is fair to Adu’s teammates: They win as long as Adu is on the field, just as the lesser lights on the PGA Tour have won by the trickle-down effect of Tiger Woods.

So let’s go over this again: Play the kid, coach. Play him the whole game.

He has a boo-boo on his ankle? Forget it. Even if Adu has two broken ankles, he needs to be on the field, either on crutches or in a wheelchair. He needs to be on the field to attract those who otherwise would not be following the sport.

He is 14 years old. Or maybe he is 10 years old. Who knows? We’ll never know. He was born in Ghana, not exactly the birthplace of efficient public records.

Fourteen works. It works for the league. It works for America.

Adu is American soccer. We have Pele’s say-so on that, and he is the icon of all icons in soccer.

Coach, we understand your desire to be true to your coaching ideals.

But desperate finances require desperate measures, which is why the league has turned itself over to Adu.

He is the man-child who claims he is ready to be in the starting lineup. Also, if you are taking notes, he would appreciate a few more ball touches from his teammates.

Not that he is complaining.

Everyone else has done just fine for him on that front.