It’s Freddy Adu! Hey, wait a minute…

Posted Mar 11, 2010 by Nick Murray

Updated Mar 11, 2010 at 03:39 PM

It all began at FC Dallas Media Day last Friday.

Unable to send one of its regular sports staff out, one of the local news channels had to send one of its news staff cameramen instead. Unaware of the FC Dallas roster, when striker Jeff Cunningham, last year’s MLS Golden Boot winner, announced himself as Freddy Adu to the camera, the interviewer went along with it, resulting in this interview.

According to FC Dallas staff, once the video got back to the station and to the sports department, calls were quickly placed enquiring whether the side had actually signed Adu, only to be informed of Cunningham’s bit of fun.

As evidenced by the subsequent appearance of the video on Yahoo’s Dirty Tackle blog, amongst other locations, word of the prank got out. It even reached Adu, currently playing for Aris in Greece, who apparently found it to be “HILARIOUS” according to his twitter feed.

At practice on Thursday at Pepin Stadium ahead of FC Dallas’ game against the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies on Friday night as part of the Tom Fitzgerald Soccer Festival, the former South Florida All-American talked about the video.

“I still haven’t seen it,” Cunningham said. “It’s funny how they showed up for media day and didn’t really know who any of the players are, so I figured I’d have some fun with it. I’m glad people saw the humorous side of it.”