12/03/24
January 28, 2005
Another soccer phenom?: This time he's nine years old. Is it a little over-the-top for major clubs (FC Porto and Manu U) to be already talking signing someone this young, or was Freddy Adu the first of many more to come? Check out the video! [shamelessly lifted from mefi]
newb here...as i watched the video you cannot discount the fact that the kid is quite good, but the most disturbing thing about the video is that not once in the entire video did i see the boy pass the ball. I would be very upset to hear this child compared to the likes of Pele, although they share a great talent at an extremely young age, it's not quite the same..like Sweet N Low and Nutrasweet, right??
posted by pikedout at 02:53 PM on January 28, 2005
9 years old?! When does talent scouting become a trade in children? I find this rather freaky. It's okay when Man U or whoever open an academy and take kids from the local area who still live with their parent and, y'know, be normal children, but I find it rather tasteless that big clubs are now roaming the streets of Sao Paolo looking for children to buy and ship to Europe.
posted by afx237vi at 03:36 PM on January 28, 2005
And I'm sure the kid's hometown club only had the kid's interests in mind when they made a long-ass video focusing entirely on the kid (with heroic background music nonetheless!) and then posted it on the Internets.
posted by worldcup2002 at 04:49 PM on January 28, 2005
And I'm sure one of the little guys swimming in my shorts is phenomenal. I'm calling IMG on Monday. Get me Bob Sugar! Stat!
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 04:59 PM on January 28, 2005
Let's face it Weedy, they ain't so much swimming as floating. There was at least one pass in that video, though admittedly that isn't much out of about twenty. But when you have that much talent why pass? I'm sure the bench aren't telling him to get rid of it.
posted by squealy at 06:58 PM on January 28, 2005
the thing about the video i thought was that generally nobody seemed to be that excited when the ball went in. what are the scores in these games? 15-12? i thought goals being scored in futebol were reason to go bonkers! there was relatively little of that in the clips. maybe the kid scores every goal ever so nobody gets excited any more. that polishing the boot thing was pretty funny though (i don't think i've seen that before, maybe it is standard issue post-goal showboating). c'mon, i think most know what mefi is, better to use the citation link to connect to the mefi thread so we can see what they are disccusing in their own way. though bitching about links is a mefi thing.
posted by gspm at 10:22 PM on January 28, 2005
Since I hate MeFi's search ... ummm ... feature, I will help gspm et al, with the link to the MeFi discussion on this topic.
posted by scully at 08:29 AM on January 29, 2005
I thought the polishing the boot thing was unbelievably bad sportsmanship. How could that be acceptable on-field behavior for a child's league?
posted by rcade at 09:05 AM on January 29, 2005
The people on MeFi seem to be pretty confused about the 2001 timestamp on some of the clips, so just in case anyone here is also baffled.. when it says it's 2001, it also says it's like 1:30AM, so clearly whoever used the videocam didn't set the correct date/time and the camera probably starts at 1am on jan 1, 2001. Or it's really freaking bright out after midnight in Brazil.
posted by blarp at 10:38 AM on January 29, 2005
could be bright at night in Brazil - that kid is a star! I'd seen the mefi discussion first so my point was more for the benefit of others and maybe to suggest that a link to their thread may have had some more interesting things to add to this thread as opposed to a link to mefi which doesn't add quite as much. just me being pedantic i guess.
posted by gspm at 11:29 AM on January 29, 2005
I agree that it would have been more useful to have a link to the mefi thread rather than to mefi itself.
posted by blarp at 01:09 PM on January 29, 2005
Mea culpa. mea culpa. So what's my penance other than to promise to link better next time?
posted by trox at 01:20 PM on January 29, 2005
I'm not really sure what to think about this. At first blush I was ready to start spouting about the kid being too young to be scouted, blah blah blah. But realize that the big clubs only became interested after the videos were put up on the Internets. At that point, wouldn't they NOT be doing their jobs to at least check this kid out? I mean, imagine a 9-year-old throwing fastballs past high-school freshmen. You think the Yankees wouldn't be all over that? As for his skills ... my Lord. What impresses me most is his touch. Those goals he scores from so far away and to have that kind of body control so young -- it's just freakish. I wonder how many kids there are like this out there we never hear about ... and how many of them are just sitting in front of a PSII somewhere.
posted by wfrazerjr at 02:40 PM on January 29, 2005
This is just a publicity stunt for the club that the kid plays for. The club he plays for put the tape out. No doubt the kid has skills, but in Dallas Texas there are kids his same age doing the same thing.In fact, during a tournament this past summer I saw a little 9 year old black kid playing central mid that Could do the same thing as this Jean kid, but the black kid actually had more pace than Jean and he would Set the other players up to score. In the game I saw he scored 3 goals and set up the other players for 5 goals. This was a semi-final game of a major Metroplex tournament. I did not get to See the finals but I heard his team won. I was told the kid was from East Texas?
posted by Dallas at 09:25 AM on February 01, 2005
Shamelessly lifted from the post immediately preceding this one too ;) Sorry. I was busy and lazy and folded the 9-year-old-second-coming-od-Pele in with the bad referee.