Thoughts on Jozy Altidore’s Move to Spain

Alti­dore cel­e­brates a goal ver­sus Mexico/Getty Images

As the excite­ment of Jozy Altidore’s sale to Vil­lar­real FC begins to fade and we take a longer term view of Altidore’s prospects of devel­op­ing for the US National Team, ques­tions must be asked. Despite the lofty sale price, the most ever received by Major League Soc­cer, Alti­dore has seem­ingly tailed off in his devel­op­ment since last year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup. While he gave a few cred­i­ble per­for­mances for the senior US National Team ear­lier this year and scored a goal against Mex­ico in Hous­ton, his focus seems to be miss­ing. Altidore’s per­for­mance in the CONCACAF U-23 Olympic qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment was below par and quite hon­estly had Freddy Adu not been so dom­i­nant in those matches the US likely would not have qual­i­fied for this summer’s Bei­jing Olympics.

Altidore’s per­for­mances with his for­mer MLS club side in New Jer­sey hasn’t been up to the lofty stan­dards expected either. This sea­son quite hon­estly he’s been in the bot­tom tier of start­ing strik­ers in the league. But at only 18, he was still by a num­ber of years the youngest start­ing for­ward in MLS. More­over, the tac­ti­cal setup of Juan Car­los Oso­rio wasn’t con­ducive to his tal­ents, and the con­stant rumors of trans­fers cer­tainly took its tool on Altidore’s psyche.

Last week, Ives Galar­cep wrote a piece for ESPN Soc­cer­net about the loss of focus by Alti­dore. While I agree with many of the argu­ments in the piece, I have spo­ken to a num­ber of peo­ple here in Altidore’s home area, south Florida who were involved with Altidore’s devel­op­ment at the youth level. Every sin­gle per­son I have spo­ken to is of the opin­ion that he remains a dri­ven indi­vid­ual with a clear under­stand­ing what it takes to suc­ceed at the high­est lev­els of the game. I have even been told the thing that most set Alti­dore apart from the other tal­ented youth play­ers both in south Florida and at the Braden­ton Acad­emy was his atti­tude and his embrace of every bit of teach­ing and crit­i­cism that goes on at the youth level.

But what has become obvi­ous is that Alti­dore has hit a wall in his devel­op­ment. His per­for­mances a year ago at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Canada while out­stand­ing were sim­ply another exam­ple of a young Amer­i­can excelling in a youth tour­na­ment. More impres­sive was Altidore’s per­for­mances in MLS begin­ning in Octo­ber 2006 when he was still only 16. But now almost two years later MLS seems to have caught up with the young phe­nom­ena and Alti­dore is quite frankly one of just many touted young­sters that heads to Spain as a teenager. But to con­tinue his devel­op­ment Alti­dore had to leave New Jer­sey. He didn’t have to nec­es­sar­ily leave MLS as his­tory has taught us Amer­i­cans who go to Europe at a young age don’t always effec­tively develop due to var­i­ous fac­tors, but he had to move somewhere.

Will Europe chew up and spit out Alti­dore as it has so many hyped Amer­i­can teenagers in the past such as Jovan Kirovski, John Thor­ring­ton, Kenny Cooper, Jonathan Spec­tor, Zac White­bread, Gabe Fer­rari and many many other lower pro­file Amer­i­can play­ers? Or will Alti­dore join John O’Brien and pos­si­bly Michael Bradley as the only true devel­op­ment suc­cesses among Amer­i­cans who went to the con­ti­nent or British Isles as a teenager? My bet is on the later as Alti­dore appears more dri­ven and a far more fin­ished prod­uct than any of the pre­vi­ous names I men­tioned. That’s why Alti­dore was sold for a fee upwards of $11 mil­lion by MLS, almost twice the pre­vi­ous high trans­fer fee for an MLS player.

What­ever the case Alti­dore is now behind in his quest to stake a claim to the start­ing strik­ers spot for the US National team as qual­i­fy­ing begins. Alti­dore has also fallen behind fel­low teenager Freddy Adu as the great hope for US Soc­cer. That may be a good thing as the amount of pres­sure put on Alti­dore to revive a fail­ing national team was quite frankly unfair for some­one so young. If Alti­dore devel­ops ade­quately in Spain and the US qual­i­fies for the 2010 World Cup, Jozy Alti­dore much like Lan­don Dono­van before him in 2002, could at 20 years of age make a big impact on the world’s biggest stage.