CHESTER >> As the second half dawned on a sultry evening at Talen Energy Stadium, Cole Missimo and Wilfried Zaha spent some time getting acquainted down the wing.
Missimo, appearing in a Union jersey on the field for the first time outside of preseason, is 23 years old. As he awaits a competitive debut for the team that plucked him in the third round of January’s MLS SuperDraft, the Northwestern grad has logged 12 games for Bethlehem Steel in the third-division USL.
Zaha is also 23, a scant four months older than Missimo. But the England international and Ivory Coast native playing for Crystal Palace totes to Chester a mountain more experience – 205 games in the top two tiers of England, 238 in all competitions, including 79 in the English Premier League. Zaha’s career trajectory is so advanced that he’s already penned his second act, a high-priced starlet shooting from the Palace Academy to a failed two years at Manchester United before returning home to become the vital cog Palace envisioned, albeit by a more circuitous path.
If the well-muscled winger cuts a more imposing figure than Missimo, despite being two inches shorter, it’s the weight of that extra experience, of making a pro debut at age 17, of playing against men since he was 16.
The juxtaposition of Zaha and Missimo – or Zaha and any of the Union’s passel of talented young players blossoming on a much more modest scale dampened by the systemic limitations of the American developmental system – is stark.
So too are the lessons that can be gleaned from the system that spawned Zaha, a player who made his debut for England a day after his 20th birthday, who flamed out as a casualty of Manchester United’s post-Sir Alex Ferguson ennui, and who could yet reascend those heights.
International friendlies like Wednesday’s encounter hold a particularly contentious place in the American landscape. They’re robbed of competitive value by the staggering of national schedules – the Union are about to turn for home on the season, alive in two competitions, while Crystal Palace is still reconvening its players from hectic summers representing their countries. Like a younger sibling beating big bro at a game the latter has stopped caring about, the result is academic, hardly beneficial beyond the gate receipts and the novelty of a glorified training session breaking the workout monotony.
While players arriving from abroad tout the benefits of encountering a new soccer culture, diffusion in the other direction remains the prominent if underappreciated facet. The fascination lies on the other end of the MLS age spectrum – on veterans ending their careers in the States and when the average age of arrival might creep more regularly to imports’ primes.
But the more pertinent focus for MLS, for the league and American soccer, should be at the other extreme, at how to chase the lower bound of ages on MLS rosters from the early 20s to the late teens.
That’s why Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew debunked the epithets about MLS as a retirement league.
“In a way, it’s probably the best way to do it, because what you’re bringing in is a vast knowledge and experience to pass on to the players that you want to produce,” the Englishman said. “You don’t want to start taking younger players from other countries; you want to produce your own.”
And Zaha’s example is one of the more instructive, especially on a night that Union Academy product and Bethlehem Steel signee Derrick Jones made his Union debut via short-term loan, the first YSC Academy grad to wear Union colors in a game.
Zaha’s story reasserts the prevailing belief the Union have adopted in altering their paradigm of youth investment. The winger exemplifies what a strong academy can produce: A youngster who embodies the unique spirit of perpetual little guys, who took his lumps early and emerged a better player.
“If you’re good enough, you get thrown in,” Zaha said. “That’s the good thing about Crystal Palace that at that age, they thought I was good enough to be in the team, so I played a few games and obviously the manager trusted me as well. So being able to play that many games gave me loads of experience. Now when I go out on the field, I know what I’m doing.”
Zaha’s story is the rule, not the exception, in British soccer. The rules in MLS are changing, and the Union are at the forefront. With YSC Academy churning out its first prospects in the last two years, the Union remain bound to the old, college paradigm, one that has drawn detractors like U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann and Union sporting director Earnie Stewart. In the pejorative view, college constitutes suspending your pro pursuit for three to four years, confining yourself to part-time status instead of logging the formative experience needed.
Those tribulations help you grow physically and mentally, as Zaha’s course correction after the Manchester United flop attests.
“You just know you’re not playing with kids anymore,” Zaha said. “You’ve got to expect hard tackles. You can’t moan and mope around because people just get on with it and just forget about you. So it’s a think when you have to be mentally tough.”
Zaha is quick to point out that no solution is perfect. He cites the example of former Palace and Arsenal great Ian Wright, the legendary striker whose career started at 21. Just as America will always have its late-blooming Chris Wondolowskis, the soccer meritocracy in England will always permit the odd Jamie Vardy to squeak through.
Even before Stewart’s arrival, the Union had endorsed the more compact pathway to the first team, and they’ve gained a forceful proponent in the driver’s seat. The Union are unlikely to ever be MLS’s equivalent of Chelsea or Manchester United.
But time has proven that it’s not always the team with the most resources that succeeds. And if the Union can exploit a market trend to which others are slow to adapt, they stand a chance at getting ahead.
“Depending on what team you go to, you get given a chance,” Zaha said. “And it’s good for your experience because now when you go into international football, it’s like you’ve got this many games under your belt already, so when you go out on the field, you know what you’re doing.”