Eimear Ryan: Is Freddy Adu a failure because he didn’t live up to our expectations?

Freddy Adu of the USA stands for the national anthem under the watchful eye of a TV camera before the game against Panama during the U20 Men's 2005 CONCACAF Qualifying Tournament on January 14, 2005. The USA won 2-0. Picture: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

I’ve always been partial to a podcast, but as the world has receded in the past two years, they’ve become an ever more important part of my day. Living with restrictions of varying degrees, we’ve all needed to expand our horizons, however artificially; for me, getting engrossed in a longform story while cooking or doing laundry makes me feel in touch with the wider world. The fact that so many podcasts seem to involve murder — and therefore can be a source of alarm to other members of the household — is the only real downside.

Despite being a true crime obsessive, even I know when I’ve listened to one too many episodes of Killer Psyche. American Prodigy was the perfect palate cleanser. Reported by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl, American Prodigy’s first season traces the career of Freddy Adu, a soccer player who at 14 was hailed as the next Pelé.

Born in Ghana, Adu emigrated to the United States as a child and became the youngest ever professional sportsperson in the major leagues when he signed for DC United in 2004. He also signed endorsement deals with everyone from Nike to Pepsi to Campbell’s Soup, and was seen by higher-ups in Major League Soccer as the sort of singular talent that could put US soccer on the global map: a Tiger Woods figure, say, or a Michael Jordan.

But it all fell apart. It is not impossible for a teenager to make it on an adult team — Cora Staunton did it for Mayo at 13, and Claire Grogan for Tipperary at 14 — but it is, obviously, very challenging. Adu’s situation was complicated by money: when you’re the highest-paid player in the league at 14, what motivation do you have to improve? In addition, he was used to having teams built around his outlandish talent; when asked to buy into a manager’s strategy and maybe sacrifice some of his own game for the good of the team, he grew frustrated and discouraged.

Now 32, Adu has played for 15 clubs in a 17-year professional career. As a prodigy, he did what seemed, on the face of it, to be the sensible thing: he signed for DC United, his local club, so that he could be close to home and family. But at the time, the MLS didn’t have the infrastructure to nurture youth talent, and instead he was thrown in with the first team players, many of whom were twice his age. Had he gone to Europe, he would have had time to develop on youth squads, and may not have been called on to play adult soccer until his late teens at least. Conversely, by the time he did make it to Europe — Benfica, in 2007 — he was expected to be the finished article, a mature player with instant impact. Instead, he struggled to find form.

An interesting aspect of American Prodigy is its host, Grant Wahl, grappling with his complicity in Adu’s rise and fall. Working the ‘prodigy beat’ at Sports Illustrated in the 2000s, Wahl wrote breathless profiles of everyone from LeBron James to Michelle Wie. While he is still congratulated for the prophetic nature of his early profiles of the likes of LeBron, he is also keenly aware that other prospects he bigged up — like Adu — did not make it. Wahl’s sense of guilt that he added to the pressure and hype on the shoulders of a 14-year-old gives the podcast a humane, reflective element — as do Adu’s own surprisingly philosophical and laid-back contributions.

It strikes me that, historically, men’s team sports and women’s team sports have had equal and opposite problems. Men’s team sport perhaps puts too much pressure and attention on its talented young prospects; in the race to find the next LeBron, the next Jordan, the next Messi, young players are thrust into the spotlight and burn out before they get a chance to mature, mentally as well as physically.

Women's team sport represents the other extreme. Some outstanding talents play for years without much recognition — or perhaps only experience it at the tail-end of the careers, now that women’s sport is capturing more of the popular imagination.

Case in point: Carli Lloyd, a giant of US women’s soccer team, who retired this year at the age of 39 with 316 international caps. She got a hero’s send-off from both the national team and her club, Gotham FC; with two World Cups and two Olympic medals to her name, she’s had an exceptional career. But it’s perhaps only in recent years — since her hat-trick in the final of the 2015 World Cup, say — that Lloyd has become a well-known international figure.

Closer to home, there’s Anne O’Brien, one of the greatest female soccer players Ireland has ever produced. In 1974, she became the first Irish female player to turn professional when she joined Stade de Reims in France. In total, she won nine league titles between Stade de Reims and Lazio, who courted her away from the French side. 

But in a 20-year professional career, she gained just four caps for Ireland, and was rarely approached by the FAI to come home for international games.

How do we quantify success in sport? Is Freddy Adu a failure because he didn’t live up to the huge expectations placed on his shoulders; because he didn’t become the next Pelé? But from another perspective, he’s a huge success, having gone from a kid playing soccer on the streets of Tema to a millionaire, and having lived all over the world courtesy of his footballing talent. Carli Lloyd has had relatively little club success, but if you look at her playing history, many of the teams she played for are now defunct. 

Even as the women’s US national team dominated on the world stage, their domestic professional clubs struggled for stability. For Anne O’Brien, it was the opposite: while she excelled within the professional women’s club structure, the national team didn’t have the resources or the common sense to make use of her talents.

If we can learn anything from Adu’s saga, it’s that skill and ability only represent one piece of the puzzle. Mental strength, maturity, and a supportive infrastructure are what separate those that make it from those that don’t. It’s not that talent is unimportant, it’s just not that indicative of who will succeed at the highest level — a tough lesson to learn for any prodigy.