When the next big thing isn't

Spare a thought for Santino Quaranta, who was waived by the Red Bulls the other day. He was among the most promising players when he made his MLS debut at age 16. While it's tempting to think that Quaranta's struggles (and bogus All-Star selection in his first year as a commissioner's pick) foreshadowed some of Freddy Adu's issues, the truth is that Quaranta managed to fight back from adversity to reach a higher level in MLS that Adu only achieved after he left. Quaranta's still young, so who knows what will happen, but he could have been a star. I hope he finds a way to make a soccer a career, even if it's not at the MLS level.

But Quaranta is also a cautionary tale for reactionary fans who are always ready to annoit the next big thing. Because fans hate failure, they irrationally despise former heroes who have failed them once. A young player, never touched by failure, becomes an appropriate object onto which unrealistic expectations can be placed. Then, when this player fails, as all players must, the fan then looks to the next big thing, conveniently forgetting that he went through the same process years earlier.

It turns out Bruce Arena wasn't an idiot for playing Brian McBride instead of Mike Magee. It turns out that Eddie Gaven wasn't a surefire replacement for Claudio Reyna. Or that Benny Feilhaber had made Landon Donovan expendable. Instead of discarding people when they fail, why not instead see what they do about it?