Adu You Believe in Miracles? Yes!

Ok, all awful Winter Olympics-inspire word play aside, Freddy Adu is quickly becoming a key player for Aris. He turned in another strong performance today in their 3-0 Greek Cup quarterfinal victory over Xanthi.  For the second straight match, he repaid manager Hector Cuper for his spot in the starting lineup by scoring a goal, making a run behind his defender to redirect a pass into the back of the net.



Apart from the goal (which was set up by a fantastic ball over the top, I must say), Adu had a "secondary" assist on Aris' third goal, pushing a ball through that eventually led to a 2 on 1 inside the box.  He came off in the 66th minute to a strong round of applause, capping off another quality showing that should only lead to another start this weekend.  With that, I feel the buzz around Freddy beginning to build in earnest.  The first goal was nice, but this second one is starting to convince some people that the once-touted "savior of American soccer" is finally hitting his stride in Europe and is poised for success with both club and country.

What has bothered me most about the whole Freddy Adu saga is that so many fans and writers have, over the course of the past year or so, dismissed him as a 2010 World Cup prospect, only revising their tune in the wake of recent developments.  Granted, it's not all fans or writers doing this, it just so happens that the ones that do do this are frequently pretty vociferous with their opinions.  But it's a tendency that bugs me because it happens fairly frequently with other players in our player pool as well.

A World Cup cycle lasts just four short years, during which there are a lot of peaks, valleys, and complete surprises.  The six months between January and June represent an eighth of the cycle, a pretty sizable chunk, so why not use that like you would any of the other six-month spans in the campaign?  Let's think for a second about some recent six month spans: Charlie Davies went from national team prospect to bona fide superstar last summer.  DaMarcus Beasley went from afterthought to flavor of the month back to fringe player this winter.  And Robbie Findley went from solid MLS forward flying under the radar to everyone's favorite replacement for Charlie Davies.  The bottom line is that until Bob Bradley absolutely needs to submit his final roster, all options should be examined.  We're not at the point where we have so many world class players that we can afford to be a little less thorough in our selection.  So, everyone from Eddie Johnson to Chad Marshall should be looked at until it's decision time.

Fortunately, these decisions are in the hands of people who haven't shown this tendency.  After all, Bob Bradley called Adu in for the Confederations Cup and called in Eddie Johnson for the November friendlies, despite their respective runs of little playing time.  He's also discussed DaMarcus Beasley and Maurice Edu in recent months, showing that he's keeping an eye on guys coming off extended lay-offs as well, even though South Africa is just a couple of months away.

So for all the flak that Bob Bradley gets for his tactics, wardrobe, and what not, I think he deserves some praise for his diligence and thoroughness when it comes to looking at every player at his disposal.  Were Bob less flexible in his approach, we might not even be discussing the possibility of Freddy Adu getting called in for the Netherlands camp at all.

As much as this seems to be an issue solely pertaining to Bob Bradley, it does have relevance in the conversation amongst writers and fans across various media.  Too often, this tendency to leave someone for dead leads to fiercely partisan arguments that not only annoy many fans in the middle ground, but may also turn away some casual fans who have their opinion completely shot to hell in the process (which, unfortunately, is all too common).  Fans are writers are entitled to strong opinions, but that's all they are: opinions.  Treating them as fact creates nothing but schisms and countless dead-end arguments.  Even something as seemingly small as this can hamper the efforts to grow the profile of the national team in this country, and I'm sure that we can all agree that that is not a good thing.

So let's do our part and stay patient, keeping our minds open to all the possibilities over these last couple of months.  Including Freddy Adu.