They think that not playing with the first team for one year can ruin a career but fail to consider tht any bad habits that are not corrected will not get better on their own....they need to be corrected. If the player is not ready to self correct, the ONLY hope may be for the team/coach/mentor(s) to step in with tough love to correct it rather than enabling the behaviors. Missing out on a season can be a setback (regardless of the problem...injury, immaturity, addiction etc) but if the issues are corrected, the career can be salvaged. Nobody would claim that surgery to repair a knee (which might require extensive absence) is a good thing but it is necessary to put the player back on track. It's because too many people take the sort view rather than the long view. Season vs career.
Has immaturity been a problem all year? I stopped paying attention after it was clear he wasn’t going to play. Going out the night before a big game is stupid any way you slice it, but I don’t remember seeing complaints about his professionalism before.
A good management team isn't going to publicly torch a young player for every little thing the player does wrong. That Carleton got banned from MLS Cup and the victory parade suggests that whatever he did before MLS Cup was (a) bad and (b) hardly the first incident. Of course, we can't know for sure on the outside, but some of the reporting on the issue (e.g. the tweet from Jeff Carlisle) suggests that unprofessional behavior has been a theme behind the scenes.
I don't have any direct knowledge of anything going on. I seem to remember rumblings that hinted at non soccer issues holding him back. In addition, the overall tone of many of the responses from people that probably know more than me seems to indicate an underlying problem. Whether or not that is true and whether it is maturity or something else, I don't know.
I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say to Andrew Carleton... He made a mistake, showed poor judgement and a lack of professionalism and maturity. And he was punished accordingly. There is nothing unreasonable about how Atlanta United handled this transgression. At the same time, while it was a mistake, it's not a career-ender. If Carleton learns from this. For an 18-year old frustrated with playing time yet being part of a wildly popular team in his hometown, I'm sure there were an array of confusing and conflicted emotions he was dealing with and doing so at an age where many of us would struggle to process our feelings. So a mistake is understandable. And, again, it will be forgivable. If he learns from it. Carleton still has a bright future in the game.. He might have one in Atlanta, but I suspect it would be best for him to get in a new environment with a clean slate. I don't think he's played nearly enough for ATL to get anything close to market value for him overseas, so he likely needs to go to another MLS team where he can get a fair shot at consistent playing time. If he goes there, keeps his head down and mouth shut and follows the rules and just lets his natural talent show, I think he'll be fine. But Team Carleton hasn't shown good decision making in the kid's career so far, from hiring an inexperienced agent with a small pool of players to signing with an unknown entity to being born on third base and acting like he's hit a triple, there's a patter of poor decisions and this latest incident is in line with that and likely goes a long way in explaining why a kid with prodigious talent like Carleton has hasn't played that much in MLS. So it's time for some deep reflection by Carleton and his camp (and I know he has a new, better-established agent now) to decide what move they want to make next and what kind of a player and person Carleton wants to be. If he owns the mistake and learns from it, this will be a blip. But if it continues to be part of a pattern, this could be the beginning of the end.
The other part of this is something Pulisic once said about his experience in Germany. He was used to always being the best on the team. I'm sure he has never been anywhere but number one in the pecking order. He's going to have to find a way to deal with it, or he won't last.
Do previous f*ckups like Freddy Adu and Brek Shea not count? At least AC is young enough that he could still see the light and turn things around.
Not sure they are fvck ups, more like the talent wasn't there to start with. You wouldn't call Kirovsky fvck up, just not as much talent as everyone thought.
Adu was the most overrated athlete I saw in my time in the US. He was a trick pony who capitalized on a fan base desperate for a star, and was quickly found out in Portugal for not being good enough. He spiraled from there. Shea did have the talent. He was a physical freak of nature, and was solid technically. If he wanted, he could have had a long successful career for club and country. But he was a solo artist rebelling against a team sport. It was never going to work. Carleton has the talent. Like many kids this age, and especially true of creative talent, his head grew too big, too fast. So, he needs to be humbled. Soccer is a team sport. Stars only exist within the context of the team. Carleton needs to put in the same effort as players around him. He needs to follow the same rules. His talent can make him special, but only after he puts in the work.
During his DCU days there were definitely rumors that he was "partying" too much and not a professional. I remember seeing a picture of Adu in a keg line at a Maryland women's lacrosse party around 2004. It was a shock at the time, because he was 15! One of those parties was broken up by police, and there were stories of him being rushed out the back door. Of course he was a teenager with a lot of money. And as we recall, there was a lot of criticism for his partying while he was at the club in Greece. I think he's actually done work as a night club promoter recently. Maybe part of the reason he's in Vegas. Shea's issue was obvious. Schellas Hyndman called it a lack of "emotional intelligence." He is just an unusual dude. He and Hyndman (who lest we forget is/was a 10th degree black belt in Combat Ki) never, ever figured each other out.
I would argue it’s definitely a career changer already though. You do something weighed heavily enough that your club will kill your transfer value by publicly humiliating you, and you damn sure didn’t just drink before a match day you weren’t a part of. And you mightn’t have killed your career, but you definitely altered the trajectory or at minimum the timeline. I hate criticizing kids, but this has to be beyond the pale to draw this sort of reaction. Look at how little shit the best players and managers in the world take off of far better players than Carleton will ever be, and this situation smacks of someone who sees himself outside the rules, but is being taught he’s not. So yeah, this will follow him for a very, very long time. It’s sad. But it ain’t show friends, it’s show business.
I used to watch DC United ‘s academy teams a lot (until I figured out that it wasn’t worth my time - they weren’t trying hard enough to make it work) and my opinions about the players in the academy were often very different than the things being publicly written about them. Very often it would take years for the public perception of a player to catch up to things that were obvious to me because I was watching them in person on a regular basis. I have a feeling that some of that is what’s going on with Charlton right now. It is just going to take a while for it to come out. I can tell you one thing for sure - guys who are laser focused on their careers do not go out partying the night before a championship game - whether they think that they are going to play or not. It doesn’t mean that Charlton can’t have a really good career - it is just a window into what is going on right now. We probably won’t see the big picture for quite a while. In the meantime, we will have to settle for snapshots - his USL highlights, discipline episodes, etc. It was the little things that I used to see at the sidelines that we just don’t see with Charlton - body language, reactions to difficulties, overall professionalism, how he talks to teammates, how he talks to coaches, how others talk to him (are they walking on eggshells?, is he approachable?), etc. Often it is something that may at first seem insignificant that you just can’t get out of your head. I just don’t know these things about Charlton. Time will tell.
Sorry - I’m old enough where that is an understandable mistake! Thanks for the correction, though - I always welcome an opportunity to get better!
On Extra Time Radio yesterday, Darren Eales said that Atlanta United was looking for a coach who can develop their younger players. He specifically mentioned Bello, Carleton, and Goslin for next year.
Understandably, I think we are making more out of this than is actually there. Fitting with the theme of AC's development and the part of his game that he needed to develop this year -- his adjustment to the professional game -- this could easily be spun as a positive development. His ability is not what needed growth this season, it was his mentality and professionalism. We don't know the details about what happened, but this experience could be a huge boost in those areas.
You had to believe they would figure it out eventually. Their homegrown assets are worth too much to waste away and they help them preserve cap space that can be used elsewhere.
They obtained a place in the first team Agustín Almendra and Leo Balerdi, who have very good prospects in Argentina. Despite this, GBS was not using many young people in the initial formation when he was the Boca coach.