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Finnish focus U-17 prodigy Adu concentrates on field as agent fields offersPosted: Wednesday August 13, 2003 12:38 PMUpdated: Wednesday August 13, 2003 1:45 PM
LAHTI, Finland -- Last Saturday, on the eve of what may be his first taste of international stardom, Freddy Adu called his adviser and former youth coach, Arnold Tarzy, from England. Adu, America’s 14-year-old soccer prodigy, the boy Nike recently signed to a $1 million contract, had been tearing it up in warmup games for the FIFA Under-17 World Championship. Three goals in 24 minutes vs. Blackburn Rovers’ under-18 team. A penalty kick drawn and converted against Australia. A goal and an assist to beat Manchester United’s under-18s. And now, just days before the U.S. opener against South Korea here on Thursday, Adu said this over the phone: “We’re going to win this thing.” Win this thing? Did somebody forget to remind Adu he’s 14? “He’s so focused, it’s all he can think about,” Tarzy says. “He knows he can get it done in the final third of the field.” Two main arenas will be the focus when the most talked-about player in American youth soccer history -- the subject of stories in Sports Illustrated and SI.com -- makes his debut in a major international tournament this week. The first will be a tiny, 7,700-seat stadium in this small Finnish city best known as a hub of Nordic skiing and the birthplace of composer Jean Sibelius. Before a world TV audience, Adu’s U.S. team will meet first-round opponents South Korea (Thursday, Galavision, tape delay 1 p.m. ET/PT), Sierra Leone (Sunday, live 7:55 a.m. ET/6:55 a.m. CT/delay 7:55 a.m. PT) and Spain (next Wed., live 12:55 p.m. ET/delay 1 p.m. PT). The goal is simple: Help the U.S. advance. If the right talent evaluators are wowed by Adu, well, then all the better. “Every top professional club in the world will have people at this tournament,” says Adu’s agent Richard Motzkin. “Clubs like to sign players young. This is the youngest tournament of its kind, and it will be well-attended by scouts, agents and club officials.” Indeed, that brings up the second venue to watch this week: the back rooms in Helsinki and elsewhere, where Motzkin plans to meet with suitors interested in jumping on the Adu bandwagon. “Some things are already set up, and other things will happen as the tournament goes on,” Motzkin says. According to the agent, he will meet with reps from European clubs, potential endorsers wishing to join the Swoosh and (perhaps most intriguingly) Major League Soccer. Both MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis and his sidekick, Todd Durbin, will be in Finland. Both have plans to speak with Motzkin. And both no doubt realize the buzz that Adu could generate domestically if he were to sign with MLS. But all sort of questions are swirling. Can Adu handle the pressure? Will MLS be willing to break the bank -- the maximum league salary is supposed to be $270,000 -- to compete with potential European offers? And what about the new FIFA rule that supposedly prevents under-18 players from moving into the European Union? Is there a loophole, as there appears to be, to allow youngsters whose parents can find work near their child? Whatever happens, don’t expect any contracts to be finalized during the tournament. Says Motzkin, “Ever since Freddy signed the Nike deal, the plan has been to insulate him from the business side of things so he wouldn’t have to deal with too many distractions. The general plan after the tournament is to sit down with Freddy and his family and look at the options that exist.” Here’s what we know with certainty: 1) Adu will not play in MLS in 2003, according to Motzkin. 2) This tournament will have a huge impact on determining Adu’s market value. “Who knows?” Tarzy says. “The MLS maximum [$270,000] may be 10 times what he’s worth, and it might be one-tenth. We won’t start finding out until next week.” FYI, here are some of the international stars who have played in previous Under-17 World Championships:
11 Random Things• Got a kick out of reading Tuesday’s edition of L’Equipe, the French sports daily, on the Air France flight over here. In a story about the battle between Yank Tim Howard and Frenchman Fabien Barthez for the No. 1 goalkeeper job at Manchester United, the author writes, sounding a bit bewildered: “The No. 1 keeper of the French national team could be beaten out by the No. 2 keeper from the United States -- behind [Kasey] Keller.”Nice try, guy. But the fact is, Howard is the No. 3 American goalkeeper behind Keller (Tottenham Hotspur) and Brad Friedel, last year’s Premier League goalie of the year with Blackburn. Who would have ever thought the No. 3 Yank could be the top choice at Old Trafford? • Many thanks to the readers of last week’s column who pointed out that the Dutch language often uses the letters “ij” instead of a “y” -- as in the names of Ruud van Nistelrooy (van Nistelrooij) or Johan Cruyff (Cruijff). Learned something I didn’t know before. • New MetroSexuals goalkeeper Jonny Walker looks like the real deal. Not that we should be surprised, considering Walker’s championship experience in the Chilean league. Walker singlehandedly prevented Chicago from putting Metro away on Saturday, allowing the visitors to snag yet another late equalizer. He’ll battle L.A.’s Diego Serna for the Late Acquisition of the Year award. • Had an excellent time getting poured on at the Earthquakes-Sounders U.S. Open cup quarterfinal in Seattle last week. No, really. Not only did the home team knock off MLS’s best 1-0, but the sold-out crowd at Husky Soccer Stadium didn’t move a muscle, even after the rains came. If you ask me, the 2,000-plus fans who came to that game were at least as important as the 67,000 who came to see Man Utd play Celtic in Seattle three weeks ago. • Speaking of the Quakes, that was a huge statement win in K.C. three nights later. Another W in New England on Wednesday could really start setting them apart in the West. • Back in June, could anyone have guessed that Wednesday’s game between the C-Rapids and D.C. United would pit the league’s two hottest teams against each other? Wish I had the Shootout package over here in Finland…. • Wouldn’t it be a shame if Bobby Convey’s last game with D.C. United (before he leaves for Tottenham Hotspur) ended with a red card? Leaving that aside, the move seems like a good one for Convey, who should get some playing time with Spurs if Christian Ziege stays as brittle as he’s been of late. • The U.S. U-17’s opener against South Korea is a rematch of their June showdown in Busan, won by the home team 3-0. “They’re a very good team,” says U.S. coach John Ellinger. “They’ve got decent size, they’re very fit and they buzz around a lot. When we played them it was 0-0 at halftime. They got a dubious penalty kick, and then we lost our legs in the second half. That’s why we came to England early before this tournament -- so we wouldn’t be jet-lagged.” • Sierra Leone, the U.S.’s first-round opponent on Sunday at the U-17 World Cup, didn’t show up in Finland until Tuesday. That’s odd, since FIFA would have covered the team’s costs beginning on Sunday. The African team begins play on Thursday against Spain. “If they’re travel-weary, Spain got a break,” says Ellinger. • I fear, after last week’s dreadful 4-1 Open Cup loss to the D-3 Wilmington Hammerheads, that free-falling Dallas may challenge the 1999 MetroStars for Worst Team in MLS History. And considering how appalling those Metros were, that’s saying something. • For now, at least, Freddy Adu’s younger brother, 12-year-old Fro Adu, has turned down an invitation to join the Under-17 residency program in Bradenton, Fla., next fall. According to Tarzy, the family adviser, U-17 coach Ellinger recently asked Adu the Younger to come live and train full-time with the team. Emelia Adu considered the idea, Tarzy says, but put her foot down this summer after Fro had spent 10 days in Belgium with his regional Olympic Development Program team and a week in California with top age-group players from around the country. Says Tarzy, “Halfway through the week, Emelia decided, ‘I can’t take it. He’s my baby.’” Mother and son will remain together in Potomac, Md., through the fall. Fro Adu, a 5’10” centerback, has grown six inches in the past year. (His height comes from his and Freddy’s father, who is 6’4”.) Opening the ‘BagThanks for all the questions/comments. Keep ‘em coming, and I’ll try to keep answering.
Who do you see as the U.S. men’s keeper of the future -- Adin Brown or Tim Howard? Also, do you think Taylor Twellman will receive more chances to become a mainstay on the national team?
You have to like Howard right now, based on his remarkable learning curve in recent years. But clearly Adin Brown has the tools to be a top-flight international keeper as well. They could well be the Friedel and Keller of the next decade (or more) for the Americans. As for Twellman, the rarity of national team games means he won’t get that many chances. So clearly he has to make the most of them. Bruce Arena clearly wants to see more of Twellman. But at the same time, we should have all learned by now that Arena doesn’t have much patience for the question: “X is tearing up MLS right now, so when will Arena call him up for the national team?” In readers’ questions of late, “X” has been everyone from Preki to Mark Chung to Brian Kamler. I have a hard time imagining any of those call-ups happening.
On the Women’s World Cup, how can possible matches against Brazil or Norway be simultaneously evidence of the United States’ tough schedule (“Quarterfinal of Death”) and Germany’s easy schedule (only matches against Norway and Brazil between them and the final)? Please explain.
Simple. If we agree that five WWC teams are above and beyond the rest (U.S., Germany, China, Norway, Brazil), then the U.S. would likely have to go through two elimination rounds of top-level opponents to reach the final (Brazil/Norway in the quarters, China in the semis), while Germany would only have to go through one heavyweight (Brazil/Norway in the semis) to reach the final. Which draw would you rather have?
As a lifelong North Carolinian and former Asheville resident, I was a bit surprised by the apparent slap at Asheville in your last column. Have you been there? It’s a great little town.
Apologies to all involved, particularly Ashevillians. (Ashevilleites?) The ’Bag Parents inform me that their vacation to Asheville several years ago was one of the best trips they’ve ever taken.
Why is it that Man Utd and other teams are doing U.S. tours but not playing U.S. teams?
Couple of reasons. One, the ChampionsWorld tour was organized by Charlie Stillitano, the former MetroStars GM who was fired after the 1999 season (with a heavy influence by MLS commish Don Garber). Let’s just say Stillitano isn’t going to go out of his way for his former employers. Two, ChampionsWorld clearly thought it could draw more fans if it had a “marquee” matchup like Man Utd-Juventus/Barcelona/Celtic than if it the Red Devils played, say, the Columbus Crew. And given that the max seating at Crew Stadium is 22,000, they stood to make more cash by playing in NFL stadiums. All that said, it would have been great if the MLS All-Star Game had been MLS’ers against Man Utd.
How the heck do the Crew go from being the most entertaining team in MLS (granted, at the beginning of the season when everyone is still trying to get back in the swing of things) to one of the dullest teams to watch?
I didn’t think Columbus would go south, either, but the Crew have been undone by injuries, national team call-ups and the inevitable tightening of the sphincter by a coach -- Greg Andrulis -- when his team goes a few games without a point. Think about the Crew’s revolving-door lineup in recent months: Brian McBride, Edson Buddle, Kyle Martino, Jeff Cunningham and several others have all been in and out, which has prevented any chemistry from developing. Not that it ever did much in past years. Makes you wonder if it isn’t time to make a serious roster change or two in Ohio… That’s all from this end. Back from Finland soon…
Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl keeps you up to date with the
world of U.S. soccer at SI.com. To send Wahl a comment, question or story idea,
click here.
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