Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at
Freddy Adu has in The Blue Wire Podcast claimed that he outperformed Ángel di María during his time at Benfica, who was his teammate at the Portuguese top club at the time. Where Adu’s career ended after his time at Benfica, Di María still performs every week on the highest football stage with Paris Saint-Germain. The now 31-year-old American was considered a mega talent, but now plays at the third level of Swedish football for Österlen FF.
At the age of fourteen, Adu was the youngest player ever to sign a professional contract with DC United, where he also became the youngest debutant and goalscorer in American Major League Soccer. Towering expectations of Adu arose in Europe, especially when he left the United States for Benfica in 2007 after another year at Real Salt Lake. The Portuguese top club counted one and a half million euros to take over the then top talent and in the same period received Ángel Di Maria, who was taken over for eight million euros from the Argentinian Rosario Central.
“I played better than him (Di María, ed.), But I decided to leave for AS Monaco on a rental basis. Di María stayed with Benfica. Guess what? He had the chance to play with a coach who came later and became a basic player. A year or two later, he moved to Real Madrid. I then played in the second team ”, says Adu. “I had three coaches in a year. The club was functioning so badly at the time that I wanted to leave and go in a different direction. ” And so Adu decided to let himself be rented to Monaco. “That turned out to be the worst decision of my career. I joined Benfica at the same time as Di María. In the first year I was better than him. ”
He went on to play seventeen games in the main squad of Benfica, scoring four goals. He left Benfica no less than four times on a rental basis: in addition to AS Monaco, Belenenses, Aris Saloniki and Caykur Rizespior also took him over temporarily. That Adu chose to leave Benfica on loan for AS Monaco for the first time, he sees as the biggest mistake of his career. “I say it from the heart. It was a decision I wouldn’t have made if I had it again. ”
Adu left Benfica permanently behind for Philadelphia Union in 2011, after which his career really came to a head. The seventeen-time American international has played for Brazil’s EC Bahia, Jagodina from Serbia, the Finnish KuPS and in the United States for Tempa Bay Rowdies and Las Vegas since 2011 before joining Sweden’s Österlen FF in October of this year.