ADU: Académica vs Benfica, 11/24 (R)

very nice find! repped. where did u get that from? and that's a goal every 25 minutes in da bwinliga, not all competitions

 

Ya that stat is just in the bwin liga but someone can figure out his total goals per minute from the second picture.

The stats are from zerozero.pt

 

Thanks for that video, new keeper or not, that was a well struck, well placed shot. Actually the pass to Cardoza was the brilliant play in that sequence. I had to watch it several times to see what happened. Freddy looks to be "fitting in" at Benfica. Very pleased to see that happening.

 

It was a joke. Was it a funny joke? Not really. But it was a joke!

Yeah, there's an efficient Google search. Put in a soccer player's name, the word "goals," and the word "minute," and a search engine that periodically crawls the web is bound to immediately turn up the latest, most reliable details for a Portuguese player's goals-per-minute average. In English!

Or you could just ask on a thread packed with message board companions who scrupulously follow that player's career.

 

thank you for aknowledging my lack of humor, that was my goal... i was just saying as benfica is a portuguese club, it's normal that it's site is in portuguese (even though we've had some pretty good sweds over the years)... i'm pretty sure there is a english version of it but to your credit i couldn't find it either but i think that's due to the fact that the site was romodeled recently so maybe it's under construction idk

i doubt you will find a site that'll give his goals per minute, but i'm sure you would find his minutes and his goals and thenm it'll be just a question of math... in fact you have exactly that info on this theard so knock yourself out and go get your calculator. i really don't care about that so...

and that's enough of this stupid discussion, ok... it just seems like in every other theard ppl are asking his goal/minutes ratio without bothering to look for the info but it's nothing personal

 

Thanks, leafster.

So in league play, as you said: 1 goal per 25 minutes. (Or a rate of 3.6 goals per 90 minutes.)

In all competitions: 1 goal per 62 minutes. (Or 1.45 goals per 90 minutes.)

 

If it's any consolation, I thought it was funny.

 

thanks, you have a eye for pure talent

in adu/benfica news, porto gave V. Setubal their first loss of the season by beating them 2-0 leaving them 10 points ahead of sporting (ha ha!) and 4 ahead of SLB a week before the benfica-porto (both still undefeated) classic where hopefully adu can spread his magic and score some goals and help us grab the huge win. (spoiler alert: freddy will start that game on the bench. wish he could start but i see petit, katso, rui costa, rodriguez and di maria(maybe) in the midfield in such an important game)

 

I might be the only one who thinks this, but I'm not really happy that people are acting that the goal in this game was simply due to a crappy reaction by the GK. Freddy made a great run, and took a very well-taken shot that managed to make it into the back of the net. Maybe the GK didn't do all that great on the play, but it was a good job by Freddy that for whatever reason caught the GK off guard. Good on ya, at least one person loves ya, Fred!

 

Or the other option would maybe have been to actually put him out there and see what happened. Who knows? Maybe train the kid.

We will never know what would have happened had Nowak tried to develop Freddy Adu into the role right away instead of buying a high priced LONG-TERM guy to play in front of him for years. Freddy would STILL not be playing had he remained in DC. Just maybe next year he'd have been getting his chance.

Maybe that's not for DC United to do. Maybe they should be focused on immediate winning, but people should not expect Freddy or his people to have stood by nodding their heads in approval.

 

You are aware that Freddy was one of only two players on the entire roster to appear in every single game that year, right? He started many of those games. His "people" were mad because he wasn't starting all of them, regardless of his level of play and regardless of the team's results.

DC was struggling with a 15 year old as one of it's starters. They needed Christian Gomez and eventually they won MLS Cup after acquiring him, but they had to come on late just to finish with a .500 record for the regular season.

This is professional soccer and coaches are fired if they don't win. I know that Freddy's "people" didn't like that, but Poitr Nowak wasn't the one who created impossible expectations for Freddy, putting him on 60 Minutes and David Letterman as a 14 year old before he had ever played a minute of professional soccer. There was no place to go but down after that. Acquiring Christian Gomez allowed DC to continue to play Freddy without being completely dependent on a 15 year old.

As a coach, I know that you are aware that private victories always procede public victories. All of Freddy's "people", with all of their public agendas made it very difficult to make that normal developmental process happen. I can see you being mad at MLS for putting the weight of their league-wide marketing campaign on the shoulders of a 14 year old, but Nowak is a guy that honestly tried to help Freddy as much as he could. Like any rookie coach, he was not always smooth about how he did it, but public record indicates that he really did try. My memory was of him trying very, very hard.

If you need a scape goat, blame MLS. Poitr was not the bad guy here. Quite frankly, in my opinion, nothing bad happened. This was just the messy business of growing up. We all just got to see it because MLS decided to make the process very public. It helped Freddy out financially, it helped out a struggling league financially, it helped Freddy's "people" out financially. There is just always a cost to having to grow up in public.

 

Highlander made this point already, but I find the above sentiment bewildering. Freddy played in nearly every damn game in DC.

 

MLS's big problem was that fans were buying tickets to see a 14-16 year old kid play with pros so he actually had to play. In Portugal, bringing a guy off the bench for a late spark is a smart way to develop a player, but in America, the same aproach was holding him back. And in America, trying to get increased minutes for said player by moving them out on the wing where might have more space and be less likely to get muscled off the ball is "playing him out of position to hold him back". I thought Nowack did a good job w/ Adu. He was in a tough position and got Adu time and the team succeeded.

RSL didn't work out for Freddy, and pretty much every other player who had played there the last few seasons.

But let's not pretend that Benfica is suddenly working magic with Adu. He's a creative player, he's got good players around him, he's coming to an age where he's matured physically and emotionally and he's fighting to earn an increasingly meaningful spot on the team. But let's not take the Euro magic stuff too far.

 

What he should have said is that Freddy still wouldn't be used correctly and still would be playing with jealous men who didn't like him or want him on the team.

 

Great points all around. And this is all I want people to realize - that NOBODY did a real good job in the scenario: Freddy, his 'people', MLS, or DC United.

Everybody tried hard to do their best and were shown to be below par, but all did in fact get better as the process wore on.

It was tough to watch live though.

 

That's EXACTLY what I was saying. Thanks for the clarification jaypro!

 

Actually, If freddy had been at DC this past year, I can almost promise that he would have been starting in the middle of the field (either as withdrawn forward behind emilio or as a ACM with Gomez moved to forward) after the first few games. Jamie Moreno remained the heart of the team, but he was unable to play a full 90 minutes effectively. He was kept on many games simply because DC didn't have a actual forward to come on and relieve him.

To show any anger or resentment toward DC for finding a better, more experienced player to lead them to a championship is stupid. DCU is not a team built for the development of american wunderkids.

 

Not to be facetious, but this statement begs the question:

Why not?

If not our own clubs, then who will?

 

I'm not angry toward DC or MLS at all. I just don't think MLS in general and DC in particular aren't well suited to handle youth talent and in Freddy's case both parties handled him rather poorly.

 

Nice generalization...RSL fans supported him, he just wasn't the right player at the right time for a bad team. Most of us wondered how Ellinger could make Freddie successful at RSL...and, of course, he couldn't.

Other than some fans being disappointed that Freddie wasn't in a position to do more here, most wish him well and are happy (and a little jealous) for his success.

 

It's not "our" clubs, it's the owners' clubs and they want to make a profit. If the club belongs to anybody else, then it is to its fans. DCU's fans want to win, not develop wunderkids. Your wishes are so far now the list, they are not even worth discussing.

Luckily, owners' desires to make profits and fans' desire to win usually don't conflict with player development as developing young, in the case of MLS mostly US, players is generally consistent with those goals. So, don't worry, Adu was an anomoly and generally young players will develop decently in MLS like Beasley did and Altidore is doing -- accounting for the fact that most young players don't pan out because they aren't good enough.

 

[Can someone confirm that 15 posts/page is the new BS default, thanks.]

http://global-ussoccer.blogspot.com/2007_11_18_archive.html#4354337913504668117

....

... The goal is Adu's second in league play and fifth in all competitions since joining Benfica. The 18-year-old started on the bench, but came on in the 62nd minute for Nuno Gomes and hit a left-footed strike from the top of the box that just trickled in after going off the 'keepers glove and the right post.

{Golo de Adu (Académica 1-3 Benfica min.90+4)}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoR...ussoccer.blogspot.com/2007_11_18_archive.html

... Freddy and the rest of the boys will be looking to have a great week of training as they get set for a formidable task when they face AC Milan in the Champions League on Wednesday, Nov. 28.

 

Unless the USSF wants to start sharing revenue with MLS teams, the clubs need to focus on their own business which is selling tickets to club games and making money.

This question isn't unique to MLS.

Before the last world cup, the talk in Italy was that the young strikers couldn't get adequate experience because the top Serie A teams were full of foreigners and veterans. Until Gilardinio moved to AC Milan in 06, Italy's top young strikers were playing at Fiorentina, Udinese, and Parma. Obviously, this is decent experience, but not AC Milan/Juve/Inter/Roma/....

And, obviously, the big debate in England after they miss Euro 08 is about foreign player limits for the EPL.

My direct answer to the question is that the players will look after themselves, and the national team will hope for the best.

 

How about europe?