It's an OUTRAGE that Torres/Adu/Whoever Didn't Play Because They Were Out of Form!

The anger starts from somewhere deep within.

Some fans of the US men's soccer team are outraged when Coach Bob Bradley keeps talents like Freddy Adu on the bench, obstensibly because Freddy's "out of form," yet still has the audacity to play Sacha Kljestan, who is also "out of form." These fans ask: "Why can Bradley play Altidore, who also hasn't played for his club team, and then sit Adu BECAUSE he's not playing for his club team? It just doesn't make sense!"

Of course it does.

Part of the problem is that we don't always mean the same thing when we say a player is "out of form." It could be the player is injured. It could be the player simply hasn't seem much action. Or maybe the player is just not performing. Sometimes, it's all of the above (consider poor DaMarcus Beasley).

But a bigger part of the problem is that different players will react... wait for it... differently to being out of form.

Remember John O'Brien? One of the US's most talented midfielders, he was also always one wrong foot away from an ambulance. As a result of his many injuries, he didn't always see much time with his club team. But if he was healthy, you had to play him. He was that good: he got healthy just in time for the 2002 World Cup and put in a great tournament.

Similarly, Jozy Altidore played a decent Confederations Cup, despite not playing a minute for his second division club in Spain. Granted, he looked gassed at times later in matches. He likely would have been even better if he was getting serious playing time in Spain. But you could count on him to play his way into form.

Coach Bradley decided that guys like Adu couldn't play their way into shape but bet that Klejstan could. He clearly made a mistake with Beasley, who had taken advantage of past experiences with the national team to regain his form. But overall, I'm inclined to give some deference to the coach: he sees what's going on in practice. If he decides that Jose Francisco Torres is too tired to play, then he's making the decision based on information that you and I don't have.

So what's the bottom line? It doens't make sense to expect Bradley to be "consistent" in his decisions about playing guys who are out of form. Consistency for consistency's sake is almost worthless: all we really care about is who performs. We can criticize Bradley for not recognizing the depth of Beasley's problems and wonder what else he got wrong, but criticizing him for his inconsistency doesn't make any sense.