Brad Friedel, the Best American Import Yet?

As the sun shone down on Anfield, sympathetic applause filtered around the stadium whilst Brad Friedel trudged wearily to the dressing room, probably reflecting on a bad day at the office during which he had already conceded four goals even before Martin Atkinson had deemed his block on goal bound Fernando Torres a red card offence – A decision that would later be rightly rescinded. That Liverpool had already won the game and secured the points almost certainly made the sympathy and empathy they showed the American a little easier, but it was also a reflection on his standing in the English game.

For many years his arrival in the Premier League did not seem at all likely. Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Sunderland all attempted to secure Friedel’s services, but failed to obtain an elusive work permit and on all three occasions the moves collapsed. Sandwiched inbetween those disappointments he engineered moves to IF Brondby following his failure to engineer a move to Keegan’s Newcastle, then Galatasary after facing similar disappointment with Sunderland where he would work with Graeme Souness for the first time. In 1996 he moved back to the MLS with Columbus Crew and the following season was included in the MLS team of the year was named the MLS goalkeeper of the year. It painted a frustrating picture, one of a goalkeeper with abundant potential, his persistent suiters testament to it, but unable to secure the opportunity to fulfil it. Hope was to come from Liverpool, who, impressed by Friedel’s MLS performances, decided to purchase his contract for $1.7 million in 1997. Again a work permit was denied, but finally one was granted on appeal and Friedel secured the move to the Premier League that he had sought for so long.

The role of goalkeeper is a strange one, one where Edwin Van der Sar can receive as much credit for a run of 13 games without conceding a goal as Shay Given for limiting a rampant Hamburg side to just 3 goals in Germany as well as countless heroic if slightly joyless performances for Newcastle. At the highest level it is about consistency, attention and alertness. Van der Sar will often have to make one or two saves a game, for half of Manchester United’s home games he is almost a complete bystander to the action. His quality is that when he is required to make those crucial saves more often that not he does. Lower down the league those qualities are still important, but there is more action and endurance. Goals are condeded more frequently, defenders are less reliable. There is generally more to do, keepers can concede one, two, even three goals and still have had a good game. Finding out where they fit between those two extremes has made players’ careers, Jussi Jakelinen, David James and Shay Given are just three examples, and Brad Friedel is another. Having struggled at Liverpool for three seasons, making just 35 appearances and playing second fiddle to Sander Westerveld for the majority of his stay he was eventually reuinted with Graeme Souness at Blackburn, the man who had taken him to Galatasaray. It was there he made his name as a battling, all action player with real quality, first in helping the side win promotion in 2001 and then by earning inclusion in the Premier League XI in 2003 after keeping 15 clean sheets for the club. Throughout the latter part of his career he has been the benchmark for consistency, holding the record for consecutive league appearances of 182. Few, if any, goalkeepers in the league could claim to match his consistently outstanding performances which have coincided with both Blackburn and now Aston Villa enjoying their most successful seasons in over a decade.

Yet Friedel is not the toast of all American football supporters. There is a common sentiment that he has turned his back on the MLS, that he showed little interest in playing for the national side unless he was garanteed to start and that although his ability was undoubtedly more than of Kasey Keller, it was the latter that was more revered by American supporters as having given more back to American football. Keller, incidentally, is still playing – at the newly formed Seattle Sounders and will be 40 this November. His another illustrious career best saved for another day. This is not an argument I feel holds much weight. Friedel has opened a soccer school in Ohio which he visits annually and in interviews regularly makes reference to ex USA keeper Tim Rice as his inspiration for getting in to the game. He has never made it his aim to disregard his roots, but at the same time has maintained a desire to become a better player rather than a pin up for the MLS. In interviews Friedel has talked about how he is considered too English to be American at home, and too American to be English at his club. It was a comment made in jest, but it must be a difficult scenario and perhaps the price for progress, a feeling of not fully belonging anywhere. It has become common place in the modern game, players pusuing their personal goals at the exspense of patriotism, Deco, now of Portugal, Eduardo, now of Croatia and perhaps Almunia, a future England number one, are all good examples.

But the blame should not like at Friedel’s door that he plays in a flawed system. It is not his fault that the only way to improve and reach the pinnacle of his profession was to leave the MLS and play in more prosperous leagues further a field. It is an unfortunate reality that it is not the USA that can decide when it has produced a world class player, it is Europe. There have already been several false dawns in that respect, notably Adu and Convey in recent seasons who eventually failed to meet expectation at Benfica and Fulham respectively. Without these players proving they can play to the European standard, American claims regarding the quality of their players have no credibility, they are little more than smoke and hyperbole. European football is utterly dominant at present, it has the world’s best player, the world’s best international team, and officially, albeit via a competition which isn’t universally respected, the world’s best club side, not to mention all the money. By moving to the Premier League, establishing himself there and consistently proving himself to be one of the best in his position, Friedel might have isolated himself from his homeland, but he has built himself a credibility in this country that gives him good reason to claim to be the greatest player the USA has ever produced, even if he is not appreciated to the same extent at home. There are other contenders, Eric Wynalda, Tab Ramos and Hugo Perez to name but three, but none of them could claim to have performed with such consistent quality in such a challenging environment over such a long period of time. Friedel has survived the fitness revolution that Arsene Wenger brought with him from Monaco in the late 1990′s, and the increased standard of play in the league which has increased its presence in the European game in recent seasons, culminating in his part in Aston Villa’s credible effort to gatecrash the top four this season. If anything these factors, in correlation to Friedel’s increasing age, should have been a recipe for weaker and weaker performances. Instead the opposite has happened, Friedel, if anything, has improved. He isn’t the posterboy for football that America would like, he isn’t their first David Beckham or Ronaldinho, he isn’t bleach blonde highlights, good looks and bags of tricks, but he is the best player to come out of America so far because he simply has a stronger combination of natural talent and an inclination to work and improve than anyone from the country who has gone before him.

I apologise, there seems to be an issue with commenting on articles, but I will address the ones that have been raised here.

The best American outfield player?

Reyna isn’t rated as highly at home because he doesn’t play quite as consistently for the national side which is when they see him play the most, but he’s certainly maintained a good level of play in the Premier League over the years which, as was also the case for Friedel, is a good indicator of a talented player who can produce over a long period of time. Donovan has talent, clearly, but is wasting it playing at LA Galaxy who haven’t even qualified for the MLS playoffs since 2005. From what I gather his spell at Bayern Munich hasn’t been hugely successful, unfortunately it has coincided with the team playing badly, sacking the manager and struggling to qualify for the Champions League. Alexei Lalas was a pioneer, he made a name for himself at Padova in Serie A when it was still the best league in Europe. Right now this is really the basis for success for these players, what they have done to progress American football abroad. He set the standard first and showed that Americans could play at that level. Friedel’s was a bigger achievement because he’s older, at the pinnacle of his position and has been there for longer than Lalas was. In terms of natural ability I’d probably go for Perez, but he didn’t play very many games and only showed in flashes for the national side what he could do. He’s what I would call in modern terms a Youtube player, a player that everyone lauds based on a highlights video and doesn’t look at the full picture. If he were around now in the revamped MLS perhaps he could have achieved more, who knows? In terms of significance, perhaps Lalas was the most important. He was one of the first widely known American players abroad, albeit because of his hair, and set the bar for the rest. I don’t think he had tremendous ability, but he was a great advert for the rebirth of American football. All the arrivals since, McBride, Dempsey, Spector owe, in part, a little to Alexei Lalas. None of these players are what the Americans want, of course, they want their own Ronaldo or Kaka, but the creation of an increasing conveyor built of Premier League quality players is something that shouldn’t be undervalued, especially for a league as young as theirs.