CARSON, Calif. – Things are starting to look up for Jozy Altidore again, with the move to Toronto FC complete and his return to the US national team fold, and 2015 figures to be a pivotal year for the 25-year-old striker.
He has plenty to prove following a fallow stint in England's Premier League with Sunderland and believes coming to Canada provides an opportunity to remind everybody of what's he capable of – and to show what Toronto FC can do, too.
“I think Toronto's just unique, due to the fact that the organization has not had a lot of success,” Altidore said after arriving this week in Southern California for the USMNT’s January camp…,“ You've got a good nucleus here, and I thought that was a really cool challenge, to kind of try to help flip a franchise that has incredible support, incredible amount of backing from the corporate side, and I thought that was an incredible challenge.”
He joins US teammate Michael Bradley, who put the idea of TFC into Altidore's head during last year's World Cup, and Italian star Sebastian Giovinco, who will arrive in the summer, as the face of the Reds. He looks forward to playing with a “team that kind of plays free-flowing, interchanging soccer.”
He had other options – he mentioned Lille and Stuttgart – but thought it was the right time to return to MLS after seven years in Europe.
“There's never been a time like this,” Altidore said. “You've got the Gold Cup, Copa America, the Confederations Cup and then the World Cup. It's the best time to be a national team player. It's the best time right now in our league. I felt like this was a good time to take the jump.”
Now he needs to perform.
“He has to prove himself,” US head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said. “He went through a tough time, and he has to fix it. And I think this is a huge opportunity at Toronto now to prove a point that he is who we think he is, meaning scoring goals and playing strong and getting Toronto into the playoffs and possibly winning the title. So there's a lot on his plate.
“At the same time, we're going to have a very busy schedule with the national team [in] 2015, with the Gold Cup in the summertime, with very prestigious friendly games in the FIFA windows and at the end of the year with World Cup qualifying. There's a lot at stake, and there's many, many occasions now for him to prove his point.”
Klinsmann asked Altidore to join the camp as the deal with Toronto, which has been in the works since October, was coming to fruition.
“It's good to get back to playing because I haven't played for awhile,” he said. “It's good to get back here and try to get my sharpness back.”
Klinsmann said Altidore is “just catching up right now,” that “every training session helps him to get in a rhythm again.”
“He rarely played in the last couple of months, so there's still a lot of work for him to do, but, obviously, it's great to have him in the January camp,” Klinsmann said. “... It's going to help him now every day to get back into a rhythm, and then, hopefully, he can prove that already in Chile [on Wednesday] and against Panama [on Feb. 8 at StubHub Center].”
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Altidore's time at Sunderland “didn't go as anybody planned,” he said.
“It was a tough experience. I think it was tough for everybody,” he said. “… I don't want to speak bad about Sunderland. I think Sunderland fans would be the first to tell you: It hasn't been good enough there. It hasn't been good enough for a while. It's not like I was there, and I was the cause of all the terrible things that happened. They'd be the first ones to tell you that.
“… I don't think I fit for Sunderland, and Sunderland didn't fit for me. Sometimes that happens. I tried to play in different ways, but it didn't fit. I'm a certain player, and they play a certain way. Sometimes it just doesn't work out.”
Things went bad almost from the start. Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio, who brought Altidore to the club, was axed a month into last season. Altidore was often asked to play as a lone striker, struggled to score goals, often missing seemingly easy chances, and netted just three in 50 outings for the Black Cats, just one in 42 league games. He faced a firestorm of criticism.
“Everywhere I go, I feel that people are always critical of me, and that's just the situation I've been in since I was 16,” he said. “But I think over there, the toughest thing is mentally how to stay in it because everybody is so negative all the time. The English media aren't happy about anything.”
He said the experience wasn’t without its lessons.
“I think the ability to kind of deal with all that, and look at the bigger picture of where I want to go as a person, knowing that this isn't the end-all, be-all,” he said. “It's not, no matter what people tell you.”
