In 2010, Don Garber called FC Dallas and demanded Brek Shea play, be sold or be traded

Greg Howard writes a long piece on Brek Shea in the Dallas Observer (great to see the coverage), and it’s an excellent introduction to the player for people who might not be familiar with the charismatic, rising star. It also has some nuggets we didn’t know.

The most interesting bit is about Shea in 2010. He wasn’t getting playing time and was growing frustrated:

“I wanted to leave,” he says. But the MLS owns all of its teams and has the last say on player transactions. Shea already had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into him through residency and MLS salary. He couldn’t sit.

So instead, Shea says, Hyndman got a call from the commissioner.

“The league told FC Dallas, ‘You have to either play him, sell him or trade him,” Shea says. “If I had never said anything, I would’ve never played.” ([coach Schellas] Hyndmann deflects questions about the incident, saying simply that Shea was a good player.)

You know what? Good on Shea, good on his agent, good on Don Garber, and good on Hyndmann. The kid deserved to play. Dallas might not have been the right fit — we imagine all parties concerned are glad it worked out — but it needed to be somewhere. Some might look down on Shea’s tactics or Garber’s heavy-handedness, but we’re alright with it (and not just because of the result).

(MORE: Did the conversation in question really take place? Hmmm)

Some other fun nuggets and good lines from Howard:

• Howard: “He looks like the happy result of a science experiment, if the scientists were among the growing segment of Americans who wish their country were better at soccer and who broke into a genetics lab to do something about it.”
• Howard: “He’s a salad bowl of stereotypes: surfer and skater and frat boy, and with his religious and motivational tattoos, like the verse from Phillipians 4:13 on his ribs and “Believe” on his calf, you can add badass and church boy, too. He’s a marketer’s wet dream.”
• Howard: “He wasn’t a great student, so his father bought books on tape for him to listen to as they drove. He’d return around 11:30 at night. On weekend game days, his parents would wake up at 5 a.m. to see Shea fully dressed, standing in their dark room, staring at them expectantly.”
• “I got a lot of crap from my coaches [when he decided to go to Bradenton], saying I wouldn’t go anywhere with soccer,” Shea says. “I could run track and get a scholarship or play football and get a scholarship. Soccer,” they told him, “wouldn’t get me anywhere.”
• Eric Avila had to teach him how to cook an egg.
• Shea has an albino rat named Vinny.
• His favorite player is Zlatan Ibrahimovic.