Respite, of a sort.

For the past two days I pointed out we were early in the media cycle, that one could almost count of some sort of statement of reconciliation coming from both Adu and United regarding Tuesday's Goff Article. That Tuesday I wrote: "There is plenty of time for reconciliation and understanding." While it isn't a joint statement, apparently DCU and Adu are talking as Steve Goff reports in today's post. This is exactly the kind of "okay, let's settle this, move into the playoffs, and then maybe we'll revisit how things are" kind of meeting that needed to happen to allow both sides to move forward with some semblance of dignity.

Michael Wilbon weighs in on the issue: "United had already won championships. The promise was to, as Garber said, 'grow the sport.' You think it's going to grow very much when the prodigy is sitting on the bench much of the time? " This is a reasonable perspective, similar to what Maradawga has written on this topic. Your order of soccer allegiance impacts the way you view this. I am a DC United fan first, an MLS fan second. That's my order of operations in these things. But if you have a stronger allegiance to US Soccer/MLS in general than a specific team, then you probably view the Freddy affair differently.

[UPDATE 10:53 AM] For an example of how to write a contrary opinion piece that does annoy me, see Tom Ziermer's column in the Badger-Herald (University of Washington): "fans of American soccer and the future of the sport in this country don't really cafre about Jamie Moreno's 16 goals... Those who have the best interest of the beautiful game...care about the future of the game in the United States. And Adu is a huge part of that future." Kid, I see you are in college. Let's try to avoid to overgeneralizations here, shall we? Many "fans of American Soccer" do not yet acknowledge Freddy as the second coming of Pele, and they're not even DCU fans. The goal of MLS is not to develop american talent, that's a means to an end. The goal of MLS is to make money, and to do that you have to put on an entertaining product, and to do THAT you might want to develop domestic talent. See, it's a little down the list there, which changes how you view things. Okay, we're cool now.

In other news... when I woke up this morning and turned on the radio, I heard DC United news. Shockingly, it had nothing to do with Freddy, but rather WAMU led off their local sports coverage with Jamie Moreno's finalist status for MVP. A story on the Nationals was second, and nothing was mentioned about either the Caps or Redskins... Huh. Maybe soccer fans are generous during pledge weeks. Who knew Diane Rehm was such a devotee of Etch back in the day?