Here’s an old prediction, now recast for 2011:  This will be Freddy Adu’s comeback year. 

His critics insist Adu is finished, barely a journeyman, and his latest gig is proof.  He has been practicing, without a contract, with FB Randers, now in 10th place out of 12 teams in the Danish super liga.   

Of course you could argue that at 21 Adu is still a hugely successful soccer player.  He’s made millions from big time sponsors, including Nike; he’s played for great teams, including the US National team; he’s scored deciding goals; been a reliable playmaker, and last year had a good run with Aris Salonika FC, the leading club in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki. 

But in an age when success is a hangman’s scaffold and anyone who gets to the top must come down the trap door, Adu is portrayed as the prodigy who didn’t deliver on a promise. 

For those who don’t know the promise here’s a recap.   

Adu comes from the Ghanaian port city of Tema, a teeming suburb of Accra. It’s here that four-year-old Fredua Koranteng becomes a sassy street star.  

He might have remained invisible but his mother wins the Green Card Lottery, moves to America. At 12, he’s allowed to skip two grades in order to play on the varsity of a small private high school, The Heights.  Adu leads the team to a Maryland State Championship.   

About the school, which is in Potomac, the headmaster writes in the online description, “At the Heights, parents are helped to form their sons into the type of men they would want their daughters to marry — men who will be great fathers.”  

Judging from the media gallery, including photos from the schools’ Annual Golf Classic, not many black fathers, or sons, ever go the Heights.  No, this would appear to be one of those places where fathers in their late 30s and early 40s, up to their eyeballs in Ralph Lauren, drive the pride, and if the Adus of the world can help them get to the winner’s circle then badda bing, badda boom. 

From there Adu goes to the IMG Soccer Academy, gets a feel from InterMilan, does time at DC United, gets a $1 million contract with Nike in 2003, has his 15 minutes on 60 Minutes, and then spins off to half a dozen mostly European teams, as well as the US national team.  

During Adu’s pro career, beginning in 2002 with the U17 national team, Adu has scored 54 goals in 198 games. 

Critics say he’s inconsistent, burned out, sometimes difficult to coach, and lacks technical knowledge.  They point to his exclusion from even the 30-man preliminary World Cup team as another indication that he’s done. 

Adu has responded over the years that when left alone he does his best work.  He claims he was overcoached at DC United.  He says that when he got the ball, “I felt like a “robot.”  

He has also inferred that that he doesn’t flourish in the European environment where there is little or no dialogue with coaches.  The message is, ‘you play, I coach. Take it or leave it.’ 

Adu still believes he can be a great player and that in itself means something.  He’s not thinking like a journeyman even if that seems to be his career. 

For the moment Adu is practicing in Randers, a working class city in the middle of Denmark, a former colonial power that once ran a slavery trade out of a castle not 30 miles from where Adu grew up. 

Such are the ironies in his life.  

Look closely at his clips, listen to what he’s saying.  Consider a kid whose freakish talent got him to that circus of agents, private schools and premium leagues that has no real interest in the player but only in what he puts in the coffers.  

And he has survived all that.  And even if he’s not 21 but 23 or 24, Adu still has five or six years left. 

Remember also that there are some players better left to themselves.  You teach them what you can and then you let them go. You let them play their game, not yours.  

In American football, Michael Vick is an example. If he has to learn how to ‘slide’ guards and backs as defenses slide their players, he is also best left to his own devices when he needs to stretch a play. That’s why people come to watch him, that’s often how he wins. 

Among his tweets, Adu has written “Attitude is EVERYTHING, Never put a period where God put a comma.” 

Freddy Adu will come back.

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