View From The Shires: The Rebirth of Mike Magee

When Jürgen Klinsmann announced the USA’s Gold Cup roster last Thursday, the one omission which drew the most ire from fans was not that of ‘big name’ players such as Stoke City’s Brek Shea or former team captain Carlos Bocanegra, but in fact of the Chicago Fire’s in-form forward Mike Magee.

Also left off the preliminary roster, it was already known in advance that Magee would not be part of the 23-man squad, yet the response to his absence highlights just how far ‘Magic Mike’, as he has been dubbed by fans, has come in past 18 or so months. Currently MLS’ joint-leading scorer, with ten goals, Magee has undeniably been one of the league’s most impressive players in 2013, though the reality is that things haven’t always been quite so rosy for the former LA Galaxy forward.

A widely heralded youth prospect, Magee attended the IMG Academy in 1999, as part of US Soccer’s full-time residency programme for the national team’s U-16 and U-17 sides. Boasting alumni such as DaMarcus Beasley, Landon Donovan and Oguchi Onyewu, just to name a few, it was thought Magee would be central part of the next generation of US soccer stars who would help mould the national team into legitimate World Cup contenders by 2010. Of course, sprinklings of minor success aside, things did not go quite to plan, neither for Magee nor US Soccer.

Upon graduating from the IMG Academy however, Magee decided not to enrol in a college soccer programme or immediately enter the MLS SuperDraft as others such as Bobby Convey and Eddie Johnson had done before him, but instead made the bold move to try his hand as a professional in Europe.

Though he enjoyed a brief stint with the famed Ajax youth side, Magee’s European adventure was largely fruitless, taking him across various countries, from club to club, without a professional contract ever materialising.

Having reached a dead-end across the Atlantic, Magee returned to the US and opted to make the move to MLS. Still a highly sought after prospect, in the 2003 SuperDraft he was selected fourth overall by the MetroStars (now the New York Red Bulls), with future national team coach Bob Bradley trading away one of the team’s hottest young commodities, Brad Davis, to the Dallas Burn, in order to move up to take the promising forward.

At the time, the move seemed like fate. After all, it was Bradley, while coaching the Fire, who first discovered Magee whilst he was playing on the same youth team in the Chicago area as his son, Michael, and recommended the youngster to then-youth national team coach John Ellinger. If anyone was going to get the best out of Magee it would likely be him; one of the league’s finest home-grown managers, who had already enjoyed MLS Cup success whilst in charge of Chicago.

In his first season in the league, Magee was involved in every game, starting 19 and scoring seven goals to go along with two assists. At only 19 years of age, the future looked bright for Magee, as well as for the MetroStars, who had previously been considered historic underachievers but now, under the guidance of Bob Bradley, looked to be heading in the right direction.

Things simply did not go to plan however, as Magee’s career stagnated over the next few seasons, while the MetroStars could not overcome their playoff hoodoo. Despite show brief flashes of the player many thought he could become, injury problems, beginning in his second year in the league, continued to hold back Magee’s development and, with playing time sparse upfront, the Chicago-native also struggled to adapt to the unfamiliar attacking midfield role he often found himself deployed in.

After Bradley’s firing in late-2005, the wave of managers which followed (Mo Johnstone, Bruce Arena, Juan Carlos Osorio) continuously failed to get the best out of both Magee and his teammates on the newly-rebranded Red Bulls. After several uninspiring years, it was plainly clear that he was never going to develop into a future national team star alongside the likes of Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey, but instead had simply become an acceptable MLS-level player; wholly capable of the odd-impressive performance but hardly irreplaceable in the eyes of those around the league.

Nevertheless, when the Red Bulls made a surprising run to the MLS Cup final in 2008, it was Magee, by now the club’s longest-serving player, who proved to be one of side’s lynchpins during the latter part of the season, thriving in his more favoured forward role alongside arguably the league’s top frontman at the time, Juan Pablo Ángel. The Red Bulls would eventually fall to the Columbus Crew 3-1 in the final and, though Juan Carlos Osorio’s short-handed side was widely regarded to have overachieved, Magee himself had at the very least proved that he still had a lot to offer to the team going forward.

Management however viewed things differently and, following the season, made it clear that Magee was no longer in the team’s future plans. After nearly being traded to Toronto FC (where things no doubt would have panned out very differently), Magee was eventually shipped to the Los Angeles Galaxy for a second round pick in January 2009, reuniting him with former coach Bruce Arena, who was beginning efforts to rebuild the team after Ruud Gullit’s notoriously disastrous spell in charge.

The trade predictably made few waves across the league. Magee was simply expected to continue to fill the role he had played in New York: a complimentary piece to the team’s main assets – in this case David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle. Indeed, during his first two seasons on the West Coast, that was the role Magee filled, as the Galaxy made huge strides under Arena, establishing themselves as one of the league’s strongest teams over the course of 2009 and 2010, despite Beckham’s shaky relationship with the club during that time.

2011 however served as a breakthrough year, both for Magee and the Galaxy. With Buddle gone, Magee stepped up for LA to enjoy his most productive season since 2003 and firmly established his place in the first team. Furthermore, with Beckham now back fit and fully committed to the cause, captain Donovan his usual reliable self and Robbie Keane joining the side in August, the Galaxy were almost unstoppable. Playing on the formidable forward-line, Magee scored ten goals in all competitions, including three in the playoffs, as Arena’s side finally captured the MLS Cup, having fallen just short the previous two seasons.

2012 then proved to be an equally successful year, as the Galaxy repeated as MLS Cup champions, Magee again playing a pivotal role in the final stretch and earning the nickname ‘Mr November’ for his exploits, having scored eight times in his 15 playoff matches since joining the team. More often asked to play out wide, the 28-year-old’s goal tally may not have reached double digits but he had quite clearly become an invaluable part of the side, thanks largely to his faultless work ethic and clutch performances in key matchups. A fan favourite whose popularity even spawned the humorous hashtag, #MikeMageeFacts, fellow Galaxy forward Keane even went as far as to question why his teammate had not yet received a national team call-up.

At the time, those comments seemed somewhat arbitrary, yet the 2013 season has so far proved well and truly otherwise, with Magee currently enjoying a Chris Wondolowski-esque breakout year.

With Beckham gone and Donovan away on a self-imposed sabbatical, Magee was asked to play a more central role with the Galaxy, upfront alongside Keane, and duly opened the season by netting a hat-trick against his hometown club, the Chicago Fire, in a 4-0 win. Far from slowing down there however, Magee’s excellent form continued, as he would go on to score three more goals in nine league games, combining superbly with his Irish teammate to form one of the league’s best strike-partnerships.

That’s chiefly why it initially came as such a surprise when the Galaxy announced on May 25 that they had sent Magee to the Fire for the rights to Robbie Rogers. Predictably, the trade made ample more headlines than the one which had first sent Magee to LA in 2009, understandably down in part to the significant publicity following Rogers after his recent announcement that he was gay, but also as many were puzzled as to why the Galaxy were shipping out one of the league’s top in-form forwards for a player who had not played in a professional game since December. To the more cynical observers, it seemed like a desperate marketing ploy by LA.

The truth is however that Magee, knowing of the team’s desire to acquire Rogers, had approached management about his wish to play in Chicago, in order to be closer to friends and family. Back and settled in his hometown for the first time since he was 15-years-old, Magee’s goal-scoring form has not let up. In fact, at the time of writing, Magee has scored in each of his seven games with the Fire and, as long as he continues to keep finding the back of the net, the calls for national team recognitions will only continue to get louder and louder.

However, one also has to accept the reality of the situation. Despite Klinsmann acknowledging that Magee was indeed a player that they were currently ‘following’, the US already has a number of solid options upfront, in the form of Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, Eddie Johnson, Chris Wondolowski and Herculez Gomez, as well as the young and promising Jack McInerney, Terrence Boyd, Will Bruin and Juan Agudelo coming through. With those names in front of him, Magee may well struggle to force his way into the picture even if his excellent form continues, though the call up of a player like Alan Gordon in recent months should at least fill him with some assurance that Klinsmann is not afraid to experiment with MLS-developed talent.

At 5-9, Magee may not particularly stand out on the field, while, to the casual observer, there’s arguably nothing special to his game either. When you boil it all down however, there’s no denying that the diminutive forward is currently looking like a natural born finisher in front of goal and anyone who knows a thing a two about football recognises just how valuable that is. If his form continues, Magee should at the very least find his way into MVP discussions, in which case national team honours should not be far off.