There wasn’t joy in every U.S. national team homecoming at RFK Stadium on Wednesday.
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While D.C. United midfielder Santino Quaranta‘s inspirational tale took another leap forward, Potomac prodigy Freddy Adu‘s often over-hyped career suffered another setback.
Despite scoring a goal against modest Grenada four days earlier, Adu delivered a mediocre 64 minutes as a starter against better-skilled Honduras.
When the 20-year-old wasn’t repeatedly muscled off the ball, he was often indecisive or simply not quick enough to generate the offensive wizardry that led D.C. United to sign him at age 14.
U.S. coach Bob Bradley also announced afterward that Adu was leaving the team to rejoin his Portuguese club, Benfica.
Combined with two World Cup qualifiers and the Confederations Cup in South Africa, in which he didn’t play a single minute, Adu registered barely a game and a half (118 minutes) in nine U.S. matches since early June, showing few hints that his immediate future will be any different from the past two seasons, nearly all of which were spent on the bench.
“Going through [the last two years] has made me a much stronger person and a much better practice player,” said Adu earlier this week. “I’m taking training a hell of a lot more seriously now as compared to back in the day when decisions did go my way more often.”
Unless that seriousness turns into playing time, there’s one more decision that may very well not go Adu’s way: making the U.S. roster for the 2010 World Cup.
