Jozy Altidore scored another goal today, the decider in Toronto FC's 2-1 win over the Montreal Impact in Heineken Rivalry Week (drink!).
It's his 10th of the season, which is a good haul. A buddy of mine put Jozy's season-long over/under at 13.5 way back in February, and I think I took the over, so he's still got some work to do to hit what my expectations were, but nobody can say he hasn't been productive. Especially on a per-minute basis, as his .69 goals per 90 have him fractionally ahead of guys like David Villa and fractionally behind guys like Sebastian Giovinco, Kei Kamara and Cyle Larin. He's keeping good company.
But Jozy is still Jozy, which means he's been injured, and he's been benched, and he's had moments when he doesn't look very interested in being part of the run of play, or doing the dirty work to help his team dig out of their own end.
Like this:
He had two chances on that play to make himself useful. On the first one, the pass is simply a bad one, but as soon as possession is given up, Jozy does... nothing much at all.
On the second? That's when I decided I had to GIF the sequence, because that kind of non-effort is exactly why Greg Vanney has felt compelled to turn his high-priced DP into a bench option instead of a name that goes onto the teamsheet in ink. Altidore has to either hold the ball up and then knock it up field, or draw a foul to stop the play. He has to give his defense – which had been scrambling, and is always seconds away from disaster – the chance to push up. So the one thing he expressly can not do is pull out of the play and let Montreal have unmolested possession in a dangerous spot.
There's a phrase Jurgen Klinsmann uses, talking about players who will "suffer for the team." I don't agree with a lot that Jurgen says, but I think this is a useful and illustrative phrase, and I don't blame him for wanting his guys to suffer in crucial moments.
In the above sequence, Jozy did not suffer for the team. He put them under more pressure with a half-measure.
And thus we come to the wildly frustrating part: Jozy is totally willing and able to take a beating, C.J. Sapong or Dom Dwyer-style, if he's in the mood for it.
In Saturday's game the mood struck him directly after he scored that well-taken poacher's goal. Go back and watch the last 35 minutes and you'll see he took an absolute pounding, winning a brutal yellow card on Victor Cabrera just a minute after going up 2-0, manhandling Laurent Ciman several times, and setting up the Belgian's red card with a nifty and creative backheel in a difficult spot.
Here's his chalkboard of touches, courtesy of Opta, over the final 35 minutes:
That's a lot of short, back-passes, which you may think indicates a lack of vision or creativity. You're wrong: They indicate that he was out there getting his ankles kicked for the good of the team, doing the sort of donkey work that is absolutely required of No. 9s in this league.
As you can see from the red lines (those are missed passes), he wasn't perfect. But the point is that he doesn't have to be "perfect," he just has to be brave, and available, and resolute.
He has to suffer a bit. Jozy can do it - we all saw it. The question, game after game, touch after touch, is will he?
No one can claim to know the answer to that for sure.
