With J Hutcherson -- Sportswriters like to lean on cliches because it makes things easier. Rather than having to explain Ben Olsen pre-and-post ankle injury, you can just call him 'gritty' or 'tenacious.' What that means is more complicated.
Olsen had a step on most of his marks at college and then Major League Soccer level. It wasn't that he was the fastest player on the field. It was that he was normally the fastest against whoever was matched up against him. That put him in a position where he could rely on a first step, win more than his share of 50/50 balls, and basically be a pest in a distributing role.
Though he's done all the criticism necessary of his early professional play, saying yesterday that: "I watched the tape of when I was a rookie and it makes me sick," he also knew what he was doing. "At some point, I would tire the other guy out, flub and cross and Roy Lassiter would put it in."
For a too brief period of time, Olsen was exactly that at Nottingham Forest. What Olsen ended up looking at as tactical naivete is exactly what most English clubs were looking for. His game was a better fit there than it was ever going to be in the United States. Then his ankle gave way and he had to rebuild his career.
Another of Olsen's statements from yesterday: "I was never that great of a soccer player, but I fit in." He's wrong. On his day and at full strength, he was an exceptional soccer player. He did it with two contrasting styles, forced to give up speed for positioning.
That's where the 'gritty,' 'tenacious,' and whatever else gets stuck in that placeholder fail. Olsen had game. He proved that enough where it shouldn't even be a question, much less a jumping off point. He also was a smart enough player to realize that wide midfield is different from center midfield. He was a positional player post-injury, and that ended up allowing him to extend his career.
Had he actually been that one-dimensional player he criticizes from his early years, his career would've never recovered from that 2001 injury. He would've been constantly looking for that 1v1 beat that decided a game, and not finding it.
Instead, he became a player who would out-think the other guy in real time. It was a style tailored to Major League Soccer. It worked well enough to keep him in the conversation of players that could change any game they were in. Olsen as a player who saw a way forward and took control. That's not gritty or tenacious. It's smart, the defining characteristic of an exceptional soccer player.
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