On Tuesday Jozy Altidore found himself in national hero mode, come Saturday afternoon he can expect to be on the bench for Sunderland at Southampton.
Earlier this week in Boca Raton, Florida – the striker’s home town – Altidore scored a fine goal with his favoured right foot as Jürgen Klinsmann’s United States drew 1-1 in a friendly with Honduras.
It was his 24th in 76 appearances for the US and left him as joint-fifth top scorer in the national team’s history alongside Joe Max-Moore. Now 43 years old, Max-Moore won 100 senior caps between 1992 and 2002. In 1999 he joined Everton, scoring eight goals in 52 appearances over three seasons before a serious knee injury saw his contract terminated by mutual consent.
Like Max-Moore, Altidore, who turns 25 early next month, is likeable, open and articulate but, more than a year into his time at Sunderland, the younger man is struggling horribly to transpose his international form onto the Premier League stage.
After missing almost the entire World Cup through injury, Altidore returned to Wearside fully fit and determined to confound the doubters but, so far this season, he has made just four substitute appearances. His solitary goal of the campaign came when he started a League Cup tie – which Gus Poyet’s team ultimately lost – against Stoke.
After scoring only once in 30 League games last season most Sunderland fans share Poyet’s scepticism about Altdiore’s suitability to the Premier League arena. The manager’s problem is finding a club willing to match the wages of the former AZ Alkmaar striker his predecessor, Paolo Di Canio, paid £6.5m for during the summer of 2013.
For the moment though Altidore hides his frustration with stoicism. He has dismissed rumours of an impending January switch to Burnley but acknowledges he needs to start putting real pressure on Connor Wickham and Steven Fletcher at the Stadium of Light sooner rather than later.
“I have to do the same thing I’ve always been doing, keep plugging away and try to take my chances when they come,” he said following the draw with Honduras. “It’s not easy, obviously, but it is what it is, the situation I’m in.
“I’ve nothing negative to say about Sunderland, I like being there, I like the fans, I enjoy the coach, I have a lot of good friends there. Sunderland’s a big club with an enormous history, a very big fanbase and very fanatical supporters. It is just about making it work, and if not, then looking elsewhere.”
Immaturity does not number among his problems. Despite his youth, this New York born, Southern Florida reared son of Haitian immigrants has already established a charitable foundation. Intended to help a country still devastated by the after effects of the 2010 earthquake, Altidore has raised money towards the drilling of a major water well and building of an orphanage in Haiti.
His on-pitch plight simply emphasises what a difficult division the Premier League is for strikers. There is no doubt a player who scored against Honduras courtesy of a chest down, a cut inside a full back and a sublime finish remains immensely gifted, it is just he is probably not quite exceptional enough at this level.
Arsène Wenger understands the syndrome. Arsenal’s manager is famously “not a big fan of international football”. As he put it: “You think it’s a level up but 99% of the time, international football is a level down. That’s why I prefer club football.”
Sometimes described as a poor man’s Emile Heskey, Altidore is full of contradictions. Big, physically imposing and blessed with a ferocious right-foot shot, he is frequently let down by an unreliable first touch, struggles with his back to goal, is not great either aerially or at holding the ball up and rarely dominates opponents.
Or at least that’s how he appears on the Premier League stage. As last season unravelled and Sunderland fans rather cruelly dubbed him “Dozy Anti-score”, a mounting lack of confidence was manifested by a tendency for hesitation and snatching at shots.
It did not help that, despite his impressively imposing physique, Altidore is arguably more suited to playing off a target man in a 4-4-2 formation than operating as the lone striker in Poyet’s hallmark 4-1-4-1 configuration.
Even so, back in 2012-13 Altdiore scored 23 Eredivisie goals for AZ in 33 games as the spearhead of a 4-3-3 formation. It rather prompts the feeling that were he to step back into a slightly less demanding European League – or maybe the Championship – the goals would flow again.
A minority of Sunderland fans still believe that, deep within Altidore, a formidable “inner striker” is just waiting to be unlocked. The trouble is quite a few coaches have tried and failed to coax this latent talent into life. After swapping New York Red Bulls for Villarreal in 2008 for more than £4m – a record transfer for an MLS export – Altidore failed to make the grade in La Liga and found loan spells at Hull and Turkey’s Bursaspor equally heavy going.
Everything changed in the Netherlands but the Eridivisie serves as a notoriously unreliable litmus test of attacking incision – for every Wilfried Bony, there appears an Afonso Alves, the Brazilian striker who endured a nightmare at Middlesbrough following a £12m move to Gareth Southgate’s then team.
The Alves debacle arguably cost Southgate his job while hastening Boro’s relegation to the Championship. Offering Altidore the extended first team run his apologists claim he requires would involve Poyet putting both his managerial reputation and Sunderland’s Premier League status at risk. It is a gamble he cannot afford to take.
