Ro's Recz

A long time ago, there was an upcoming soccer prodigy in the US named Freddy Adu. Some people might remember hearing his name, while others may have never heard it at all. Since I am a big sports fan, I remembered the name Freddy Adu, although it had been a long time since I had last heard of him.

Adu was a 14 year old prodigy who signed with the MLS (Major League Soccer) in 2004. He was the biggest thing in soccer at the time, and he was considered to be America’s best hope of being able to compete with teams in Europe and the rest of the world. Ultimately though, Adu had a difficult time living up to the hype, and he never became the global superstar that many people envisioned him to be (although he is currently trying to make a comeback in a Swedish soccer league).

However, this recent podcast called “American Prodigy” looks back at the story of Freddy Adu and tells what happened to him. While it is not a sad story, it is a precautionary tale. In the podcast, they tell of how the MLS hyped Freddy up too much because they wanted to build him into a superstar they could build their league around; however, this was putting too much weight on a too young of a kid. Also, he got a bit unlucky throughout his career, in the fact that many of his coaches got fired soon after he joined the club (without anything of Freddy’s doing).

Still, not everything with Freddy is bad, and much of his career actually worked out well (even if he did not live up to the once tremendous hype). In fact, he has played professionally for close to 15 years, and he is still only 31 years old. Ultimately, I think American Prodigy did a really great job of telling Adu’s story in an unbiased manner, and it leaves hope that there is still room for Freddy to get back to a bigger league (even if it is unlikely).