Tipped by Grant Wahl on Twitter this morning, it appears that Oguchi Onyewu will spend at least another year with AC Milan after he renewed his contract with the Rossoneri.


But here's the kicker: By Gooch's own request, and because he lost the entire season due to the knee injury he suffered in October, he has waived any compensation.


That's right, Onyewu will play in Italy for free next year.


Without some additional thought, I'm hesitant to react forcefully to this news. On the surface, it's a stand up move by Onyewu; he got paid for a year in which he didn't play, and obviously would still like a chance to prove himself in Serie A. Voluntarily taking no pay shows a level of personal commitment and integrity that is rarely seen in the world of professional sports.


But there's a flip side, a practical one, that makes the move rather dangerous. AC Milan was none too happy about paying Onyewu's salary this season after he was injured while on international duty; this move essentially compensates them for the lost season, but out of Onyewu's pocket. This type of thing would never, ever, fly in an American sport where players unions hold sway; playing for free is just about the craziest thing a professional athlete with a short career can do.


One has to wonder if Milan told Onyewu and his representatives that they weren't planning to bring him back after "losing" the funds paid to him this season. Coming off of an injury, and with essentially the same resume he had prior to landing in Milan, Gooch's options were to either head out of town with his tail between his legs or suck it up and take a bullet to get a second chance to prove he belongs.


Again, I'm still processing this. We may need to flesh it out in the comments to get it covered from all of the appropriate angles. Is this good or bad?


One more note: with camp opening in Princeton today, I hope to have some thoughts to share on the various question to be answered as some point soon. As the World Cup preparations begin to hit high gear, I'll be putting up shorter-than-usual posts with news and musings as they come up.


*UPDATE*

- Thanks to Sully below, I have to scratch everything I wrote that insinuated it would be 2010-11 in which Gooch would be unpaid. He essentially just tacked an unpaid year to the end of an extension. He'll play for free in 2012-13, provided he's still in Milan. Damn me, apologies for the confusion. This changes things a bit from the "danger" perspective and make it just a good faith move on Gooch's part.

I find the "club v. country" debate, at least when it comes to players, to be terribly tedious. It only seems to matter when a big club is involved, and while they have a right to be upset about their investments getting hurt while on national team duty, they know the deal when the sign world class talent. Don't want to risk losing a player to an injury picked up while he's away playing for the glory of his country? Then don't sign internationals.

I'm using a facetious argument, but I do feel frustrated that we must go through the nonsense of it all every time. Of course I bring all of this up because AC Milan President Adriano Galliani wants the USSF to pay Oguchi Onyewu while he recovers from a knee injury sustained in the United States' draw with Costa Rica last night. Galliani's moaning makes me want to scratch my eyes out; suck it up, Milan.

• Expect the World Cup bidding race to get awfully smoky over the next year, as much of the stuff will be blown around. FIFA leadership, bid organizers, and political figures will be blabbering on about this bid and that, saying little of consequence while making a lot of noise. Case in point: Sepp Blatter telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia has a "good chance" to win one of the two World Cups up for grabs. Russia may very well have a shot at hosting in 2018 or 2022, but that doesn't mean that Blatter is revealing anything. Telling a powerful, and intimidating, figure like Putin that his bid is strong is while visiting his country is just being polite.

• From The Stanford Daily, a lament from an English ex-pat that the American sports franchise system runs counter to the "American Dream". I agree for the most part, but I don't really see the point of attempting to connect our social ideals to the way that professional sports business is conducted. From the very beginning of pro sports in America, rich men with selfish interests and total control have dictated; the distance between our major population centers, even in the late 19th century when baseball went professional, simply didn't allow for the "open" model of clubs that sprang up in England. America has always been about business from the very beginning; the rest of the world just took longer time to come around to that reality, allowing for the proliferation of clubs that the author writes references. But it's clearly about business now, and the idea that starting up more teams and instituting promotion and relegation (in this case, in American football) will fit more with American ideals doesn't jive with me.

• Although we saw a few missives on the nonsense that surrounded the TV rights for the US-Honduras match ahead of the game, I never got around to writing an opinion on the way FIFA handles them myself. This will have to be my stand-in, though I don't know that I would have used quite as much hyperbole in describing the momentum lost by not having the game be widely available in the post-Confederations Cup evironment: "Just as the sleeping giant awoke, it was laid back to rest." Still, it's not a bad line, and I agree with the sentiment of the piece that FIFA needs to reconsider their broadcast rights rules.

Deep Cuts appears every weekday, and highlights American soccer-related items from around the web. If you have a story for Deep Cuts (even shallow ones), you can send it along to matchfitusa@gmail.com.

When US National Team defender signed with Italian giants AC Milan July, it was rightly declared a watershed moment in the history of American soccer. One of our boys had been snatched up by one of Europe's most celebrated and storied teams, a club with countless titles to its name and a seemingly perennial UEFA Champions League spot. One of our boys would be lining up with soccer royalty like Ronaldinho, Gattuso, Pirlo, and Seedorf. One of our boys had hit the big time.

Or so we thought.

Milan has played three league matches thus far in the 2009-2010 season, and Onyewu has yet to see the field. More depressingly, Onyewu did not dress for the Rossoneri's most recent game against Livorno on the weekend, and today's match, a Champions League clash with French power Marseille, is extremely unlikely to be Onyewu's Milan debut.

When Onyewu will get playing time is a mystery, answerable only by Milan's manager Leonardo. It's not looking too good, and the US National Team desperately needs Onyewu in-shape, in-form, and playing consistently ahead of next year's World Cup. Onyewu is the American defensive stalwart and a dangerous weapon on set pieces, and Bob Bradley cannot afford to have his first choice central defender rotting on the bench (or worse, in the stands) for his club. Bradley has given lip service to not playing any American not seeing regular playing time for his club; Onyewu's problems may stretch that policy, because the drop off to an understudy is significant.

It would be easy to put this on Gooch, to call him out for reaching too high and signing up with a top-level club without a certainty that he would play. But that's unfair to an athlete whose career is finite and ability to earn a living playing a game is ephemeral. If you're a soccer player, and AC Milan comes calling, how can you possibly say no?

Playing time is important. Training alone can't improve a player past a certain point, and at twenty-seven, Gooch's development period is essentially over. That's not to say he can't get better, but to do so requires playing in a live match against quality opponents with the intensity of the game framing his actions. Onyewu isn't yet getting that experience at Milan, and one has to wonder if he ever will. There's an outside chance he could play his way into the team, and with Milan's form leaving something to be desired, it's always possible that Leonardo could shake things up. For the time being though, US National Team fans have to sit here and watch as their defensive linchpin stagnates at one of the most crucial points of the international soccer calendar.

Onyewu did what any player would do. He made a move to a team kids the world over dream of playing for one day. He broke ground as an American, signing with a massive club in a league that never signs Americans. He set an example for millions of youth players in the United States who might never have believed that they could grow up in this country playing the sport and one day find themselves at AC Milan.

He did what any confident player would do, and signed believing he could play himself into a starting position.

That it hasn't yet worked out is a problem, and it's obviously up to Onyewu to prove to Leonardo that he deserves a shot. It's frustrating for American soccer fans who want to see Gooch playing and playing well before both the remaining qualifying schedule and the World Cup, especially with the depth at central defense lacking. Selfishly, it's natural for us to wonder why Onyewu would make it this difficult on himself, when other offers were obviously in play.

Would you rather have Onyewu playing at a lesser club, or riding the bench at Milan?

Don't answer that. If you're reading this piece, you're likely a National Team fan, which means that the former would be much more preferable to you than the latter. But that doesn't mean you should blame Onyewu for grabbing an amazing opportunity when it was presented to him. If Gooch had signed elsewhere, in a lesser league or with a lesser club, and it had been revealed that AC Milan had offered him a contract, I might wonder about his mental toughness; players who aspire to be great should always push towards the greatest challenge rather than slide sideways into the path of least resistance. Onyewu has taken on the challenge, and we should commend him for it.

All the while worrying about his lack of playing time, of course.

Just because I'm proud of Gooch for landing at AC Milan and laud him for his belief that he could play there, I'm not above making this statement: If Oguchi Onyewu isn't playing come January, forcing a transfer or loan will be a necessity.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.