Michael Bradley at the 2017 Gold Cup. The longtime US captain returns to the national team tonight.
TAMPA-
Michael Bradley, long-tenured captain of the United States Men’s National Team, is likely to return to the field for his country tonight for the first time since that fateful, star-crossed night in Couva, Trinidad 366 days ago.
In what ought to be an astonishing development but is unlikely to be met with much more than a shrug, Bradley is likely be booed tonight at Raymond James Stadium, which ought to remind us that for all its beauty, there’s often little justice in this game Americans call soccer.
Bradley doubtlessly understands some of the anger comes with the territory. He was, after all, the captain of the first US team to fail to qualify for the World Cup in nearly two generations. Fans were and are angry and scapegoats required.
But Bradley doesn’t necessarily feel like he has anything to prove, or that he needs to enter the camp more motivated or with more of an edge than usual.
“I am who I am,” Bradley said this week. “My motivation is to give whatever team I am on the best chance to win, to improve as a player every single day in how I train and how I work so that when games come, I’m able to be good and sharp and continue to impact winning and make a difference. That part of me has always been there. It makes me who I am and that’s not going to change.”
Bradley also doesn’t seem, at least outwardly, to be taking his omission from the team in the year since Couva as too serious an indicator that he’s lost his place, or better stated, a place, in the national team setup.
“Whenever a World Cup cycle ends, whether you qualify for the World Cup or don’t qualify for the World Cup, there’s always a bit of a down period,” Bradley said. “There’s obviously some friendly games, but historically those games have been used to start to bring young guys into the fold and start to see how a new group can handle it all. This time around was no different. On my end, there was zero issue with that.”
And yet this time it feels different and there are plenty who do take issue with Bradley’s return. To them, Bradley is a signifier: of the previous cycle’s failure, of an era of US Soccer they want to burn to the ground (with some justice),of a federation they perceive as in stasis since last October, of a generation of players they feel were entitled, lazy and must be left behind. To many, Bradley isn’t just a signifier. He’s the ringleader of the qualification failure, an object lesson in what US Soccer must never be again.
Because soccer is as ironical and cruel as it is whimsical and joyful, there’s an argument, I suppose, that Bradley shouldn’t be in this camp.
His form in MLS has been a question-mark since he skied a penalty deep into the Guadalajara night in the CONCACAF Champions League. There’s irony there too, of course, a terrible mistake costing Toronto FC dearly in a tournament they in many ways deserved to win and wouldn’t have won without Bradley, who was likely to win MVP of the CONCACAF Champions League had his penalty tickled the twine.
Michael Bradley was a centerpiece of a three year Toronto run that saw the club win a MLS Cup and play for the CONCACAF Champions League title.
Bradley, and not coincidentally Toronto, have largely been in a swan dive since, now mathematically eliminated from defending the MLS Cup they hoisted last winter, the one that made Bradley a legend in Toronto. Until that sad night in Guadalajara, Bradley was for four-plus years the centerpiece of a Toronto FC that had played for two MLS Cups, multiple Canadian Championships and the CONCACAF Champions League final, rewarding Toronto’s substantial financial investment in him by delivering trophy after trophy with the same laser-focused, controlled burning he’s played with most his career.
This season, his game has slipped some, and his club has suffered for it.
A debate about Bradley’s form should certainly be part of the debate as to whether Michael warranted a call-up to what essentially are an inconsequential pair of October friendlies.
That debate should also be equitable, which requires the tacit recognition that what’s happened this year in Toronto isn’t all Bradley’s fault.
The defense has been a swinging gate and easily passable set of traffic cones ahead of Michael; the club has too often had to battle without a healthy Jozy Altidore and just when the club appears to fix one problem, another pops up.
Yet the ineptitude of Toronto FC’s title defense being so inextricably linked to a slip in form by Michael Bradley is a pointed reminder of a nefarious, unwritten but nearly axiomatic rule in North American soccer circles over the past decade: when in doubt, blame a Bradley.
Upset the US doesn’t play attacking, free-flowing, possession-first soccer?
Blame a Bradley, even if the closest thing the US have ever had to a colorable, sensible and tactical style that commanded respect was the at-times ruthless counterattacking team led by Michael’s father, Bob.
Upset the United States didn’t advance to the quarterfinal of the 2010 World Cup?
Blame a Bradley.
Never mind that the 2010 United States Men’s National team remains the only men’s team to win a group at the World Cup.
Never mind that they did so with Oguchi Onyewu half the player he had been thanks to a crippling knee injury and with young midfield starlet Stu Holden playing at fifty percent.
Never mind that they won the group even though nine months prior to the group stage, the team lost a key cog in their counterattack, Charlie Davies, to a terrible car accident that claimed the life of a woman named Ashley Roberta.
Blame a Bradley, because one of them started Ricardo Clark against Ghana, which is clearly why Tim Howard was beat near post on the first goal and obviously why Jay DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra misjudged a deep ball towards Asamoah Gyan in extra time.
Need a pretext to hire Jurgen Klinsmann, the high-profile name your federation lusted after for years despite the price never being right?
Blame a Bradley.
Never mind that in his final game as US manager, the Gold Cup final against Mexico, the US stormed to a two-goal lead playing some of the most stylish, attacking football the federation has seen in ages, only to lose when the team’s elite fullback left injured
It was easier just to say a Bradley was second-rate than to engage the substance of an argument.
In the main, the “Blame a Bradley” rule has made the use of Michael as the key scapegoat for the US qualification failure much more seamless.
Michael Bradley has always had his cynics, from those who cried nepotism over his early international caps to those who questioned why he couldn’t handle Jurgen Klinsmann’s wholly reasonable (cough) assignment of playing three positions at once effectively at the 2014 World Cup.
Through it all, Michael has continuously impacted winning.
Before his five seasons in Toronto, Bradley did what American fans- and his previous manager Jurgen Klinsmann- demand of every American player. He went to Europe and succeeded, playing and starting for much of eight years in Holland, for Borussia Monchengladbach in the Bundesliga, at Chievo and later at old European firm Roma in Serie A. Bradley only failed to earn consistent time at the end of his tenure in Rome, where he competed and lost a starting spot in an immensely talented midfield, and on a brief loan to a bad Aston Villa team managed by Alex McLeish, the Scotsman whose tenure at Villa was an abject failure.
At the end of his Roma days, Bradley was offered a host of loans by the club, who didn’t want to part ways with his talent, despite not having a significant first team place for him in a midfield that featured stars like Miralem Pjanić. Instead, after eight seasons abroad, Bradley did what a lot of fathers do, and took a job with more stability for more money, returning to MLS. The narrative he “became lazy” when he came home is belied both by his record at Toronto and individual honors, such as multiple MLS All-Star selections and being honored as US Male Athlete of the Year in 2015.
Bradley ranks fourth all-time in appearances with 140 caps for the USMNT. He is tied for ninth in all-time goals (17) and is second in assists (22). As captain, he’s also played the role of ambassador for US Soccer better than anyone who preceded him.
Bradley was among the first to honor the victims of the Pulse shooting, has long advocated for equity and equality, spoken out against racism and consistently championed immigrants, who he’s called “the heart of the sport.”
Michael is one of two American players to score in a World Cup, Gold Cup Final and Confederations Cup (Landon Donovan).
He has three career World Cup qualifying goals against rival Mexico, including that chip against El Tri in Azteca, the one that at the time rescued the US’s flailing World Cup campaign in the summer of 2017, the one that at the time one notable American soccer writer called the greatest goal in US Men’s Soccer history. For perspective on how difficult it is to score in World Cup qualifying against El Tri, Clint Dempsey, the greatest player in American soccer history, scored none.
Michael is third all-time on the US men’s list and was a vital part of the US making their only international final in team history, at the Confederations Cup in 2009. It’s fair, I think, to suggest that if he doesn’t take a rash red card in the semifinal win over Spain, maybe the Americans hold a two-goal lead against Brazil. Maybe not. But they aren’t in that final without Michael. In competitive matches, Michael’s win percentage is second to only Landon Donovan among players with a minimum of fifty caps.
Michael’s World Cup goal, against Slovenia, rocketed his career arc in Europe but more vitally, rescued the Americans from what would have been a crushing defeat to the worst team in their group. The video of that goal, which features a crying American fan, the usually reserved Michael erupt in joy and a stoic Bob trying to organize his defense in the moments after his son scored at a World Cup, is riveting stuff.
You won’t find a critical US win in the last decade that doesn’t feature Michael. He was so indispensable his teams were crushed without him (See, Costa Rica, autumn 2013), even as they constantly struggled to find a suitable midfield partner for him.
Sitting in the light Couva rain last autumn, it was hard not to watch Bradley in the final minutes, once everyone in the stadium knew the US had to score.
For a minute or two, I fixed my gaze mostly on Bruce Arena, intermittently seated then standing, hands in pockets, expressionless, rarely shouting instructions, more stunned than steely, more rocked than resolute.
Then I watched Bradley, who along with Christian Pulisic and Ale Bedoya remained vocal to the last, calling out runs, clapping, urging teammates forward. When it ended, Bradley’s head sunk, and his eyes, first drooping downward and then glancing to towards the sideline, bore despair and dejection. And then he went to be one of the first teammates to console Christian Pulisic.
“The disappointment, if you think about it, will never go away,” Bradley said this week. “That will always be there.”
In truth, Bradley had little to do with the American failure. He was by some distance the second most effective American player in qualifying, behind Pulisic, and the summer before the autumn qualifying debacle was by far the best American player at the Gold Cup.
But he was the team’s captain, and so the failure must and will inform Bradley’s legacy, perhaps even more than any of the other players and most the coaches that made the trip to Couva. In many ways, only Bradley will ever allow himself to move on.
There’s a hope though, that fans might too.
Soccer is a funny game.
It has a way of making heroes out of outcasts, lions out of lambs. Maybe there’s another chapter in Bradley’s national team story.
Bradley responded to the World Cup failure by going home and dominating the MLS Playoffs, where he was, according to his teammate Seba Giovinco, “the best player on the best team.”
Playing two positions in the game, his performance in the 2017 MLS Cup Final was one for the ages, as he completed an astounding, match-leading 91.4 percent of his passes and registered five tackles, six clearances and a match-high five interceptions. “The bald guy was everywhere,” a jubilant Jozy Altidore would say in the aftermath.
His absurd versatility has been both a blessing and a curse: allowing him to look brilliant as a number ten against Mexico in a friendly played on a choppy carpet where El Tri were stuck in traffic, for example, or as a lone defensive midfielder in national team qualifiers, as another.
That versatility can create ill-conceived faith that Bradley is a superhero, as it did for Klinsmann at the 2014 World Cup, or for Bruce Arena, who had him cover for six attacking players all playing in Caribbean heat on three days rest in Couva.
It also can make him extraordinarily valuable, as it should for the US national team, which is creating depth in the midfield with Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Paul Arriola, Kellyn Acosta and Wil Trapp, among others, but lacks veteran leadership and influence ahead of next summer’s Gold Cup.
The US could use Bradley’s leadership and experience in camp as it cultivates the substantial talent around him.
While Weston McKennie appears to be a “sure-thing”, starting for a perennial Champions League club and excelling, this isn’t the case in the remainder of the midfield pool.
Paul Arriola has high-level international experience but is not a like-for-like fit either positionally or technically, to Bradley. Trapp has looked a step behind and lost in the few high-level internationals he’s played, none coming with the pressures Bradley has faced. Tyler Adams talent is substantial; he may prove to be the best holding midfielder the US ever produce. For now, he’s played zero competitive matches for his country and remains a teenage midfielder in MLS, hardly a proven commodity. The list goes on.
The anti-Bradley sentiments don’t care for these realities.
Michael has been booed in several American cities over the course of this MLS season, and while he’s been a member of the visiting team in each of those circumstances, it’s hard to argue that Bradley’s being booed in a place like DC or the Bronx, where Toronto is hardly a rival, happens only because he plays for the reigning league champion.
Distilled to their essence, the fashionable Bradley hate appears to boil down to this: US Soccer failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup and Michael Bradley was the guy who wore the captain’s armband.
Devastating US Soccer failure? Blame a Bradley.
That’s petty, ugly, and ought to be beneath the bulk of a fan base that spends a great deal of Twitter time invested in debating who’s the most woke. Yet here we are.
The hurt from Couva will never go away. No one likely understands that better than Michael Bradley.
There’s still a chance that hurt ultimately becomes something positive for US Soccer, though the federation’s stuck-in-the-mud and spinning its wheels approach to progress stirs doubts.
Maybe tonight can be positive for Michael Bradley too.
US Soccer and its fans would need to do a great deal to match Bradley’s positive impact on the program and winning.
But “don’t boo” seems like a decent floor.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.