I had the distinct displeasure of watching the disappointing end to D.C. United's MLS season yesterday evening, as the Red and Black dropped a 4-0 decision to the Chicago Fire at RFK Stadium.
It was a royal beating in every sense of the word. Chicago took to the attack from the opening kick, and United couldn't seem to develop any flow on offense all game long. Throw in a couple of defensive breakdowns, a couple of mistakes from goalie Nick Rimando and a tantrum "ala Roberto Alomar" from Christian Gomez (except he spit on a member of the Fire, resulting in a red card and automatic ejection), and the evening was complete. For a more detailed breakdown of the breakdown from Sunday evening, visit DCenters.
But the big news came after the game, when Mike Wise of the Washington Post interviewed former U.S. National Team member and ESPN broadcaster Eric Wynalda after the game:
"No one is coming out and saying it, but Freddy is not going to play here next year," Eric Wynalda said.Wynalda is the Sean Salisbury of soccer announcers, a bit of a blowhard but very familiar with the inner workings of his sport. He is the all-time leading scorer in U.S. history. When Wynalda says, "My feeling is, Freddy is going to be in New York next season," well, you get the feeling the kid's junior prom next May might not be at the Rockville Pike Econo Lodge.
United President Kevin Payne angrily denied Wynalda's prediction, but you have to wonder what's on the wind after Adu's agent, Richard Motzkin, talked to the Post's Steven Goff on Saturday:
Adu has not granted any interview requests since making his surprising comments, but his agent, Richard Motzkin of SportsNet in Los Angeles, agreed to discuss the situation."Freddy is very much a team-first player and he is very much focused and motivated to do whatever he can to help the team win a championship," he said.
Asked his reaction to Adu's complaints, Motzkin said: "It came from a frustrated young adult. The timing of the comments certainly wasn't good, but in terms of the substance, Freddy is a person who speaks from the heart, and to me, it sounded like he was speaking from the heart.
(snip)
Motzkin was critical of the way United handled the recent controversy.
"Did Freddy do enough to remedy the situation?" he said. "I would flip it and say, 'Did D.C. United do enough to remedy it?' Because, at the end of the day, while Freddy is extremely mature, articulate and intelligent, he's still 16 years old. If someone is looking for adult-like behavior, whether that's in the form of an apology or the request for a meeting, it's reasonable to ask the question, 'Shouldn't the adults also swallow some pride, act in an adult-like fashion and reach out to someone who maybe isn't comfortable clearly doing things they want him to do?' "
Folks, these are not the words of an agent that wants to make peace.
As for Adu's unhappiness and the chances of him leaving D.C. United, think of it this way: How many of us have known folks around Adu's age coming to their parents and asking to transfer to another high school or college because they weren't happy? Do we call those kids immature? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But move on they do, and we don't give it a second thought.
Toss in all of the additional pressures from MLS and the rest of the American Soccer apparatus, and my money is on Adu getting out of town.
Know this: D.C. United may very well be the flagship MLS franchise. But the folks who run MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation care more for the game as a whole, than they do about being fair to D.C. United. And if they come to the conclusion that Adu and the state of the sport in America would be better served if he left Washington, expect it to happen in a New York (or L.A.) minute.
UPDATE: Out in the Bay Area, PJ Swensen saw his team eliminated too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: DCenters has more:
Okay, so everyone whose overreacting to the Chicago game, please calm down. If we make moves out of reaction to one game, then they're probably not going to be the smart moves we need to make to improve for next season. This needs to be approached rationally, with a level head and honest eyes. Right now, we as fans feel too negatively to be objective about what we have, just as after a victory we feel too invincible. In case your wondering, I'm sure that Kevin Payne went through a pack-and-a-half of Marlboro (Lights, I'm guessing) in order to chill him out enough to deal with all the yelling and moaning that was going to come.Shakespeare is wrong. "If it must be done, twere best done quickly" he wrote in MacBeth as he considered the possibility of making various regime changes. He's wrong. We need to do things a little more slowly, to consider what the right course of action is. Sadly, we have plenty of time for that now. So let's use some of it, and use some common sense.
In the end, I guess we really shouldn't be surprised that the season ended this way. We always knew that the biggest hole the team had to fill was on the back line in the wake of the departure of Ryan Nelsen after last season. In a sense, the United club we saw on Sunday evening bore a striking resemblance to last year's team -- the one, that is, that took to the pitch while Nelsen was playing in international competition for his native New Zealand.
