Jozy Altidore finally becomes the striker the USMNT has always needed

It’s been a long and often frustrating road for Jozy Altidore with the United States men’s national team. Anointed as “The Next Big Thing” before he’d even won a single senior cap, Altidore has been a major figure on the national team for nearly a decade, playing for the USMNT over 100 times — but it’s only just recently, in helping the national team win the 2017 Gold Cup, that we’re finally starting to see Altidore become the player he’s always needed to be.

Altidore made his professional debut as a second-round SuperDraft pick in 2006, playing for the then-New York/New Jersey MetroStars, now better known as the New York Red Bulls. At the time, he was just 16 years old, but he made an impression for his new club anyway, ultimately becoming the youngest MLS player to ever score and start a playoff match in his very first season — each feat coming just a few weeks shy of his 17th birthday.

Everyone expected huge things from Altidore, but a much-touted move to Europe in 2008, joining La Liga side Villarreal, fell utterly flat. He spent most of his three seasons with the club away on loan, but scored just three league goals total during those years. A transfer to Dutch side AZ briefly revitalized him, but everything fell apart again after he moved to Sunderland in 2013, seemingly leaving Altidore’s career adrift.

All the while, the young striker was still getting regular starts for the USMNT, because even through his struggles at the club level he was unquestionably the most talented center forward in the player pool, and that warranted continued chances to play. For the most part, Altidore actually did well with the national team, but there was always something missing, part of his game that just wasn’t there.

Altidore is a big man, standing a little over 6’1, with a strong, athletic frame. But he rarely played as the stand-up, powerful “number nine” up top, typically preferring to work off the ball in a less physically demanding role. Of course, with CONCACAF being the bastion of incredibly physical soccer that it is, that often left Altidore struggling in big matches, and left fans deeply disappointed in him on a far too regular basis.

In 2015, though, Altidore moved back to North America full-time, joining MLS side Toronto FC in the same offseason they signed USMNT captain Michael Bradley. The American duo helped propel their new Canadian club to new heights, and Altidore has steadily improved his all-around game — but recently, he’s taken huge strides toward filling in the gaps in his game.

Altidore was actually left off the USMNT’s initial Gold Cup squad in favor of Dom Dwyer. The team wanted to give the newcomer an extended look in competitive action and wanted Altidore to come into knockout matches with fresh legs, not having been ground down in the group stage. He was a big part in the US, breaking down a previously resilient El Salvador defense in the quarterfinal, then was massively impressive in the semifinal against Costa Rica. Both matches showed off just how vastly improved Altidore’s holdup play was up top, with the big man doing better at using his body to help extend possessions and create scoring chances for his teammates than we’ve ever seen before — not to mention getting himself into better scoring positions against physical defensive setups than he’d ever been in the habit of doing before.

Altidore scored the first and winning American goal against Costa Rica in the semifinal, coming up huge late in the match after a tough grind in the first 70 minutes, but he didn’t wait that long to help his team score against Jamaica in the final, showing off another part of his game that’s improved a surprising amount: his ability on free kicks.

While you shouldn’t expect to see Altidore taking too many free kicks in the coming years, seeing his all-around game be so vastly improved is a wonderful sign for the USMNT. He’s still probably never going to be the superstar we all once hoped he could be — even though he’s still just 27 years old, there’s very little projection left for improvement for him at this point — Altidore is still arguably one of the best strikers in CONCACAF, and arguably the most complete of all the top forwards.

There’s no longer a huge, glaring weakness in his game like there was just a couple of years ago — he’s finally doing all the little things, the “dirty work,” as it were, that he’s needed to do from the get-go but we never really saw him do. We may never get the Jozy Altidore that USMNT fans wanted — but we’ve certainly gotten the Jozy Altidore that USMNT fans needed, and that’s more than enough.