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Maybe you had too much too fast. Maybe you had too much too fast.
Or just over played your part.
Nothin shakin on shakedown street. Used to be the heart of town.
Dont tell me this town aint got no heart. You just gotta poke around.

Freddy Adu was once pure potentiality. He was the savior of American soccer. He was the American Pele that would deliver the U.S. from the dark ages of soccer mediocrity. At 14, he signed a million dollar contract and played his first professional game. It’s safe to say he had a little too much hype too soon. Barely pubescent, he struggled in MLS, against men twice as strong and twice his age. He has fallen in and out of favor with the national team. He has bounced around Europe in search of the right club with which to ply his overblown trade. Some people speak of him as if he’s already gone, so paralyzed by hype’s glaring lights that he still looks like that underdeveloped 14 year old playing against properly developed men.

The hype has been rightfully toned down. But I still wonder how anyone can dismiss Adu, a barely-20-year-old still looking to latch onto the right club to get significant playing time and experience. Although he has struggled at the full international level and at high level European clubs, he has achieved consistently when playing against peers. Adu excelled at the 2003 U-17 and 2007 U-20 World Cups. In his three games at the 2008 Olympics, Adu scored four goals. Even with the U.S. National Team, Adu has shown glimpses of the sort of creative attacking abilities that the U.S. has never truly had. He has flare. He has touch. He has that electrifying element of unpredictability that American players historically lack. He draws us in under his spell until we’re ready to believe again. Then he turns back on himself one too many times, a child playing on a freeway, and he loses the ball to an onrushing defender. We all shake our heads. We get that sinking feeling that maybe he’s too flighty and too soft, that he can’t last against the big boys.

Despite all of Adu’s perceived failures, which were inevitable given his unrealistic expectations, it’s easy to forget his successes and how much potential he still has. A recent loan from Benfica to fellow Portuguese club Belenenses will give him another chance to dig in, to develop physically and mentally, to harden the tactical elements of his game, to work his way into the national team. Despite all the harsh criticism and dismissals Adu receives, many fans still invest their hopes in him. I’m one of them. We hope Belenenses is a good fit. We hope Adu will get playing time. We hope Adu will see significant time on the national team if he shows more consistency. We hope he can still change American soccer by becoming a fraction of that magnetizing player that he once promised. Somehow these hopes feel so much more natural and fair than the media-fueled hyperbole that warped our impressions of Adu from the start, which dislodged him from any realistic context and measurement of development.

Adu’s career has been a series of revised expectations. Maybe Adu’s abilities can dovetail with what are now more down-to-earth expectations. Maybe this will propel him forward. Maybe he has finally reached a place that lies sufficiently under the radar for him to play within himself.

Well, well, well – you can never tell.◊

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