MiddleSeason: The Freddy Adu Thread

You know I've seen this repeated so much in Adu threads that people seem to just take it as gospel and keep repeating it, but I have never seen any proof to back it it.

Di Maria cost Benfica nearly 10M USD whereas Adu coast them 2M. Di Maira played 26 leagues games that first season, Adu played in 11. It's pretty obvious what the the countless coaches thought.

Can you please show me a few of these Benfica fans that thought Adu had more promise than Di Maria?

 

Now I'm impressed as well. Very few Americans have any knowledge of Cromwell.

Freddy Adu..... world class historian.

 

The differences is that Cesc spent 6 years in a top flight academy (Barca) before going to Arsenal's first team. Adu on the other had went straight to DC United's first team at 14/15 without a comparable background.

Nowak and many other have said the same things about Adu touring pro at the time, some more diplomatic than others, do you really thing they are all wrong?

 

taken at face value the quotes are idiotic. imo what is implied are expectations. those coaches were expecting a polished player. expectations and salary of polished pro differ from those of a youth.

adu's biggest problem is he needs to be tactically more sophisticated to harness his technical skills . he doesn't have the physique or pace to bridge the gap at this level.

 

There are pockets of fans who've advocated for every young prospect that's ever come along, so what. Fan opinion means less than nothing to the clubs. You think Benfica gives a crap about my player assessment.

The outcomes of the careers of Di Maria, Coentrao, and Adu speak for themselves.

Di Maria always held his spot at Benfica in competition with other players despite coaching and tactical changes.

Coentrao went through the same transfer hell as Adu but he progressed and improved and earned his place and his success.

I'm sorry but at some point it's on Adu.

 

why the hell couldn't they teach the guy? cardiff took the time to teach ej. other us players have turned at 16.

 

I guess that's what they're saying (bold), but for even the most sophisticated (Xavi), how much is polish and how much is just playing game in and game out with the same players?

(and the quotes are still a stupid misreading of the problem, imo, which is there was no place for Freddy to go in the US at the age of 15, so he might as well get paid while he tread water waiting to turn 18.)

ps -- why would the coaches be expecting a polished player? Can you think of any 18 - 20 year old, no matter how good and how pedigreed, who's "polished" that young? They should all have been looking at potential, and still be in that state considering how fractured his playing time has been.

 

The first team is not a place for teaching. Players need game time to learn but if your playing in the first team results are far more important than anything else.

Nowak tried to bring Adu along slowly but is was constantly ripped by the fans, media and ultimately Adu himself. Now, as many have said, Adu is paying a price for being fast tracked.

 

Adu handled his business just fine when he was allowed to play. He scored some goals and created some more and got off to a very promising start for an 18 year old kid. He had a hard time getting back onto the field especially after he left for Olympic qualifying. There were many Benfica fans who were confused by this as well, but you already know that since you know everything and are the spokesman for Benfica.

You are wrong here. The coach of Monaco went on the record in an interview and said that he never wanted Adu there in the first place. He indicated that it was a marketing decision by the front office. I am not familiar with the circumstances surrounding the loan to Belenenses but I am sure you are since you know everything.

Firstly, do not tell me what I understand and what I don't understand, and especially don't tell me I don't understand business. You do not know me and you know nothing about my profession.

Second, what business invests $2 million to acquire an asset (Freddy Adu) and signs a 5 year contract which guarantees they will spend approximately $5 million more on the asset for a total of $7 million over 5 years, and then loans that asset to someone else to care for and takes zero interest in whether or not they are doing what is in the best interest of the owner of the asset which would be to improve the asset. Instead, the business only seems interested in what portion of the yearly cost the loanee pays for the asset rather than working together to develop the asset in order to realize some sort of return on investment (by either selling Freddy or using him to help win games) for both the loanee and loaner.

As a Benfica supporter, you should be upset at such an outrageous waste of club resources. Your club is on pace to lose about $5 million out of a $7 million investment. That is terrible business by any measure and the loss could have been either prevented entirely or mitigated substantially if Benfica had paid more attention to Freddy Adu than their office furniture. Say what you want about Freddy Adu's talent, but Benfica are far from a bunch of European Football business geniuses, but you already knew that.

 

a player who lacks the physique or pace needs to be relatively more polished to stay on the field. in order to get those games with the same players adu needs to be able to stay on the field. jozy altidore is pretty raw but he's a beast and thus gets plenty of games.

dcu was more of the problem than mls. a team like san jose/houston would have done a better job.

 

Of course it is. Look at any team anywhere. There are always new young players who aren't the main men on the team, but who play some and contribute some while they're learning from the game experience and from being with the rest of the squad.

Read the Aris guys talk about Calvo and how he hardly played and then improved and now he plays constantly.

If Freddy isn't good enough to contribute, that's one thing, but acting all surprised because he doesn't just walk into the team, play like a Greek league veteran, and take over is a crock (still my opinion).

 

like i said cardiff took the time to teach ej what he should have learned at dallas. nba and nfl embraces educating players. given mls draws much of it talent from the amateur ranks the teams sure as hell need to embrace the concept.

 

Great post thanks Imperador3 for a fair and level assessment.

 

And Adu is already 35 and washed up right? Give it a rest, Adu is still very young, lets see what happens first before throwing dirt on his coffin.

 

Didn't EJ play more for the reserves then the first team while at Cardiff? The reserves is a place for teaching, the first team is not.

 

No, the first team is not a place to develop players, not the type of tactical development Adu still needs. How many coaches and mangers have said pretty much the same thing? If you don't want to believe them that's fine with me. Just keep coming up with new theories why Adu hasn't had the level of success his biggest fans predicted. I'll be sticking to the same theory I've had for the 3 years now i.e. he's limited athletically and positionally/tactically not that great.

No team is going to take the time to teach and develop a young player they do not own the rights to. Teams take players on loan expecting an immediate impact, if thats not the case then there is very little reason to ever take a player on loan.

I'm sure Monaco, Belenese and Aris all thought Adu was going to make a bigger impact sooner rather than latter, they saw all the youtube highlights everyone else saw. But after seeing up close on a daily basis they all seem to come to the same conclusion.

 

I have no idea where it was specifically, hell I may have just started believing it myself. If I remember correctly though, it was either translated posts from team message boards or someone saying what was being posted. I'm talking about early in the season too, when Di Maria was starting a decent amount and Adu was subbing in nearly every game. Adu was having a bigger impact on games imo, though Di Maria's talent was obvious. I'm also not saying I believe the "Adu was a better prospect" argument, but I watched I think basically every game Adu played for Benfica and he was definitely good enough to play in that team. He wasn't perfect by any means but for his age I expected to see big things from him down the road. The path he's taken has flabbergasted me to be quite honest.

 

from the person you were quoting I found it interesting that you were saying Adu doesn't have the physical tools to make it while the other person was talking about Xavi. I don't think Xavi is any more of a physical specimen than Adu is. Iniesta has nothing about him that looks like an athlete unless you like your athletes pasty and doughy looking. They have enough physical ability and an amazing amount of technical and tactical acumen that they are still at the apex of their sport without being the prototypical athlete.

Disclaimer: Don't try and put words in my mouth and say that I'm comparing Adu to Xavi in terms of how good they are. I know someone will attempt to do this, but I'm not sure SCooper, wait that's too easy, SuperC, visits this thread.

 

Bolded #1: sorry, still don't believe it. Maybe you're saying that Freddy needs tactical experience to play where he should be playing, and as a result, he's stuck out wide. But needing some special skill/knowledge to play left wing at Aris? sorry, don't believe it.

Bolded #2: Teams have all sorts of arrangements for getting experience for their young players, if those players can't play in the first team. In La Liga, I believe they have reserve teams playing in lower divisions. In the PL, the reserve teams are going away, so players seem to go out on loan to other teams....Man Utd makes a good amount of money selling their players, so they seem to watch the players in the loans, send them to only a few carefully selected places, and they take them back if things aren't working out. The arrangements seem to be professionally managed, and the teams that get the players have incentive to treat them well in order to keep that steady stream of good quality players coming....needless to say, nothing about the way that Benfica has treated Freddy seems to be anything you'd call either "professional" or "managed". As someone said, they spend more time/effort picking office furniture.

 

WTF are you talking about here?

 

Dude, that play at 33 seconds that you're so enamored with is nothing. Seriously. Adu probably has 20 plays better than that you could have found on youtube.

 

They were ready. Adu wasn't. That's Cuper's point.

 

So is it you're right and all those managers are wrong or are all those managers just lying to trash Adu for some reason?

I have not idea what point you are trying to make with your second statement in connection with Adu. The loan system work like this. The team sending the player out on loan benefits from having their player get valuable first team experience that they themselves can't provide. The player benefits from getting first team minutes. The team taking the player on loan benefits from getting a player that they otherwise couldn't afford, a player who's going to make an immediate impact. The last part has been Adu's problem, he's not been able to make the necessary impact at the clubs he's been loaned to and as such they have no use for him. Those teams aren't going to waste time money and effort helping to develop a player they don't own the rights to.

 

Dude, you have no idea what other kinds of nothing I'm enamored with. Thanks for your input.