For Adu, MLS Not The Promised Land

The person I blame the least is the coach, Peter Nowak. Coaches have one job: win. By necessity they're myopic. If they don't win they get fired. Nowak doesn't market and he shouldn't be growing anything. I dismiss his notion that nobody's bigger than the team, because people are bigger than the team all the time, even championship teams, in every sport. In many cases, it's the coach who is bigger than the team, who wants to gather all the power and make certain his authority can trump even the popularity and marketability of a prodigy. And Nowak seems to wear his inflexibility with pride. Still, I blame the people who made the promises. I understand Kevin Payne's quotes in The Post yesterday.

The club president said: "The issue with Freddy is that he's on a good team and he's competing for playing time with very good players. There are not enough starting positions to go around."

I get that. Makes total sense. And I presume Payne, who very much knows what he's doing when it comes to putting together a championship-caliber team, is right on the money with that assessment.

Then you know what? Don't promise. Don't sell. Call the league people and say, "League people, shhhhhhhh ! We don't know if this kid is going to be in the lineup every night or not, so let's not SELL PEOPLE A BILL OF GOODS!"

Not only did all this hype surely turn off some people who might want to simply go and watch a prodigy, but it had to jack up Adu's expectations as well. No kid, no matter how great he is (LeBron James is Exhibit A) needs to hear how great he is all the time. Undoubtedly, Adu has his own set of expectations, which include making the 2006 U.S. World Cup team. And now that it appears unlikely, he's upset. What's happening to his timetable? How could this trip to the top be derailed so early?

I like Adu. He's stunningly mature and composed. And he's a damn good player who has the charisma to indeed sell his sport. But like all 16-year-olds who have been made a fuss over since age 4, he's a little self-centered, moody now and then, petulant once in a while. And he joined a team with, probably, the most talent in MLS. Talk about too much too soon. These kids should never be playing professional team sports this early.

Adu and Michelle Wie, another 16-year-old with too many people slobbering after her, both learned the most important lesson in sports recently: the sting of disappointment.

I hope Adu doesn't leave. I hope he stays here until he can realize his primary ambition of playing for a major European club. I hope the sycophants around him leave him to sort most of this out for himself. I hope his coach finds it in himself to develop this young phenom and not just sit on a pat lineup, which truly is what the MLS needs. I hope Adu has learned that the eve of the playoff season isn't the time to make certain points or think primarily of self. While the kid is not without a little blame in this dispute, it's the grown folks who deserve most of it.