It’s not what we expected from these players but here is a list of American Players who were to be the next big thing and who have cooled down. Will they return? Will they live up to the hype? Or will they become obscure for tales of players who never were. 1. Teal Bunbury: Since turning pro he has played for Sporting KC playing 78 games scoring 18 goals. While the numbers are not that bad, the past 2 seasons Teal has cooled down beyond belief. He is still very much a work in progress but with his starting placing in doubt in KC he looks very much far away from the USMNT. 2. Mikkel Diskerud: A huge talent, he came on strong in his debut against South Africa a few years ago. But since then Mix has been absent from the USMNT, while in form and not in form. His loan to Belgium was non existent . No question Mix is a talented player. But he needs a break out year. He is down the pecking order and his next club will tell the tale if he finally breaks out. 3. Brek Shea: Still very much in the picture but this year has been a year to forget for Brek. Out of the national team and in the dog house in his club team. Brek has great numbers 19 goals in 91 games, but this year he has just been off. Still very much the closest player to a USMNT from this list, but he needs to show the Brek of old. 4. Juan Agudelo: His move to Chivas USA seemed more like a punishment rather than playing time. His 2 goals for the USMNT seemed like this was the player who would be the finisher the US has so fought to have. Since then he played himself off the Red Bulls and now is as obscure as he is ineffective at Chivas USA. Agudelo seemed to have the talent, but unlike the rest on this list he has cooled down and has been the most mediocre of this group. 5. Freddy Adu: It’s hard to believe he is just 22. But for the first time 8 years Adu has played more than 11 games, which was his average since leaving DC. He has found new life in the Union but is still very far away from a USMNT call up.
I think part of the problem is a massive over-inflation of the talent of these kids when they're youngsters. When somebody says Mikkel Diskerud was/is a "huge talent"............I wonder if they're watching the same player as me.
Not sure if these guys really fit the bill... but they have all not performed up to our expectations to date: Feilhaber Altidore Convey
Altidore, really? What are his expectations, to be Messi? The guy has come through...an entrenched starter on a very good club team. 15 goals in 34 games. 17 in 49 for the USMNT. He's 22 years old...so yeah, still plenty of time and he's already one of our top..6 or 7 field players. These type of expectations are (one of) the reason that Freddy Adu has bombed out, and now looks like nothing but an average MLSer. Feilhaber...totally agree. Yet, there are still countless people saying he needs a shot, but what has he done in the MLS recently. Nothing.
Well... I remember hearing about how Altidore was going to be our first world-class player. He's settled in to be a reliable workhorse up front. Also, Jozy has kind of wandered in the wilderness in Europe. He settled in this last year, but had a rough go of it up until then. I agree that expectations are unreasonable, but I'm not sure that most people see Altidore as irriplaceable in the USMNT lineup in the way they do Donovan and Dempsey. That was where I was setting the bar.
just my opinion but Altidore shouldn't be on that list...obviously he's going to face some pressure with Boyd (esp. if Boyd lights it up this year) but I think it's to early to put Jozy in with this group. Let's see how he does this next season and the other USMNT friendlies.
"A rough go of it" for an 18-21 year old (out of MLS) should be expected for American prospects...who seem to hit their maturity a year or two later than European prospects for instance. Altidore becomes less irreplaceable as we have more strikers coming through, but he is #1 striker for us right now, or at least 1a along with Gomez.
You don't think Jozy should be on the list? That's fine. An intersting question is whether or not he would have been on the list a year ago (before his strong season at AZ). What about Eddie Johnson? Age 28, washed out of Europe, but having a strong year in the MLS... Same thing for Kenny Cooper. How about Lee Ngyun. Disappeared to Vietnam for a few years, but now looks pretty decent with the Revs. Throw in a Danny Szetela as well.
I think he would have been on the list a year ago. His Hull City stay was atrocious. But he has found the right league, system, team and coach and he has played himself off "the list"
I'm not sure the Agudelo inclusion on this list is really fair. He missed some time with NYRB due to training with the ill-fated US Olympic qualifying team and then picked up an unfortunate medium-term injury in the first game against Cuba. While he was out injured Kenny Cooper came out on fire and the other guy he is sitting behind is a global icon and a big dollar designated player. With Chivas he has 1 goal and 1 assist in 438 minutes and if you watched him in person he looked dangerous early on. Unfortunately he has picked up another limiting knee injury. Right now I would say he is more on a "potentially injury prone' list rather than the "cooled down" list.
Has Danny Szetel re-emerged in some fashion? The others you mentioned all made a comeback in recent times but I thought Szetela was way out of the game.
Atrocious? For a 20-year-old who essentially hadn't played anywhere above MLS up to that point, what did you expect? He didn't score very much, but no one else on that awful team did either; I think he was second to Vennegoor in scoring among forwards for Hull that year, with a grand total of two goals. He also helped set up a handful of goals and was a first-choice starter before Phil Brown got canned. For an American striker, that's practically a transcendent club season.
On the money. The amount of overhype that he got here was always puzzling to me. But it happens with many players that have a good game or two (literally) in call-ups.
It's like the hype that Gale Agbossoumonde got when he made his first official appearance for the USMNT a year or two ago. People started writing him into their WC2014 rosters. Now he's a sometimes starter on an NASL team.
This thread is more about fans than it is players. Here, let me start & end this list: Freddy Adu /thread
First of all if you bothered to actually look at the injury report of Chivas USA you would have known that he had a knee injury which is why he hasn't been playing, furthermore he didn't play himself off the team of RBNY total opposite he couldn't get time on the field because he had too many players ahead of him at his position so getting time on the pitch was almost impossible. He was traded to Chivas USA so he get playing time and develop and was actually doing great until his unfortunate injury which stopped him dead in his tracks. Right now he's working his way back into the starting XI, word of advice the next time you decide to talk about Juan Agudelo and the team he plays for make damn sure you get your facts straight, the kid draws in 2 to 3 defenders every-time he gets anywhere near the 6 yard box which frees up everyone else and creates space for his teammates to in on goal and he was doing a damn good job of it too. Don't understand the punishment reference at all the kid is only 20 years old and you make it sound like he is in his mid to late 20s, and to say that he is the most mediocre of the prospects is plan out insane.
Jozy had a bumpy start in Europe but he seems to be in a really good situation. With a second year in Holland I would expect that he has an even better year this year than last year and would IMO put him well out of the conversation of prospect.
Last I heard about him, he was arrested in Jersey after a bar fight. I think his pro days are long behind him.
I think the OP is about a player not living up to the expectation not if they were judged fairly or not. So I could see Altidore on the list because he has such a ridiculous expectation (like Ghosting said about him being a world-class player). Eddie Johnson is another good one. Adu for sure. Idk about Convey. He definitely fizzled out in the USMNT scene though. Wondo, perhaps? There was a little bit of a dropoff from Agudelo. And, again, not from a fair perspective but more from a "What has he done lately?" angle. He had the set back during Olympic qualifying and hasn't scored for the USMNT since late 2010. I know he's been injured and growing as a player at the same time but coming from being the youngest person to score for the USMNT ever you could call that a drop off. But it's been such a small sample size I can't see too many people listing him there. I remember an article (ESPN?) about Earl Edwards hailing him as the next best goalie. I don't think he even starts for UCLA now.
Yup. A lot this has to do with unfair expectations. Jozy Altidore has 49 caps, and was the youngest starting forward at the last World Cup. As a 22 year old he had a 19 goal season for an Eredevisie team last year. People need to take a step back and say...................that's pretty damn good. In a sense, Jozy was thrust into an important USMNT role before his time. And that was because the players who were supposed to be in their primes (Johnson, Cooper, Findley, etc.) weren't up to snuff. Who's younger? Jozy Altidore or Andrew Wooten (this "young" prospect people talk about from Kaiserslautern)? The answer is Jozy Altidore.
Earl may still come thru, as he may be UCLA's starting keeper next year. We'll see. DJ Countess is always the guy I point to in discussions like this. He started for every youth team we had (U17, U20, U23, etc.), got plenty of playing time in MLS as a youngster............and then fell off the face of the earth.
I think its a bit unfair to put Juan Agudelo his was playing really good for Chivas and im sure would have gotten called up for the Mexico game. But injuries have set him back