Benny Feilhaber: C'mon Bob, tell us how you really fell.

Benny Feilhaber's mother must have told him there would be seasons like this.

His big move to the Premiership has fizzled, with him failing to find a way even to the bench of the English top flight's worst team, Derby. And then Feilhaber wasn't fit enough to be included on the US Olympic qualifying roster, which had to face fairly low-level CONCACAF opposition on its way to Beijing.

Now, there's no reason to be alarmist about any of this: players go through rough patches. Most of them learn and get on track. But while Bob Bradley called Feilhaber into the national team camp for tomorrow's game against Poland, he also had a stunningly frank assesment of where Feilhaber's gone off track:
"He has to grow up. [...] He has to mature as a player. He has to understand, day in and day out, how to earn the respect of the people he plays with. [...] You never want to take away anything from a player at a moment when he's achieved something or when the team has achieved something, but it is incredibly important that the bigger picture is still there. In that regard, the growing process for Benny needs to include all of this."
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=519558&root=us&cc=5901

So basically, Bob's saying that Feilhaber got too high on himself because of his wondergoal against Mexico to win the Gold Cup and that he then forgot he still had a lot to prove. I don't think you usually hear coaches air their opinions quite so openly. That's not necessarily a criticism of Bradley-- just recognition of the fact that this is a monumental public pimp slap on one of the US's formerly brightest rising stars.