In the mid-2000s, Freddy Adu was earmarked as the next big thing in world football.
After making his professional debut as a 14-year-old for D.C. United in 2004, he became the youngest ever player to appear in professional sports in the United States. His international debut came at the age of 16, amid reported interest from some of Europe’s biggest clubs.
But the career that followed was a nomadic one, as his progress stalled and Adu would turn into something of a globetrotter in search of fresh opportunities.
Adu on his nomadic career
This saw the American take in stints in Portugal, France, Greece and Serbia amongst other places, but Adu believes that a key issue with his career was the fact that these teams were often more interested in the marketing buzz that signing him would generate, rather than handing him opportunities on the pitch.
“I’d sign for teams, then you’d find out they were just trying to use you for the marketing part of it, to get eyeballs on their team,” Adu tells FourFourTwo.
“Then when you’re not playing for that team, it’s like ‘Why am I here? I’m living in a different country, I’m trying to get my career going and I’m not getting a chance to play’.
“At some point, you just figure out ‘This isn’t going to work out’.”
For Adu, the mixed messages from clubs he signed for would prove to be extremely frustrating at times when he was looking to get his career back on track.
|There were so many different places where the front office wanted you, but the coach had different ideas,” he adds. “I’d been brought in under false pretences.
“Then you go to another team, sometimes you’re playing and it works out at the start, but then it doesn’t work out.
“After a while, it wasn’t fun any more, you start losing confidence in yourself, like ‘How am I here, and how am I not getting a chance to play here?’ You start questioning the reasons why you were brought in.”
For Adu, this cycle began in 2008, when Monaco brought him in initially on loan from Benfica for the 2008/09 season, before declining to make the move permanent at the end of that campaign.
“The whole thing started when I was in Monaco – the president wanted to bring me in, I knew him, I was cool with him, but the coach had different ideas.”
