Philadelphia Union In Talks To Send Freddy Adu To Toronto FC

Recently Twitter has created a new layer of mistrust and cynicism toward anything resembling a Major League Soccer rumor due to the rapid growth of a few accounts (and their parodies), in the past two years, that deal with such topics.

Fans of the Philadelphia Union may be some of the more critical groups of supporters on this issue because of the atmosphere of deceit when it comes to the same thing in baseball. The Phillies community is notorious for the actions of a few of its members that helped to start the most frequent misuse of Twitter for the sake of 'fun': fake writer accounts.

The efforts of those few mischievous fans spanned a new era of mistrust of internet based unofficial statements or reports of trades, transfers and other methods of player movement.

When rumors sprouted out of Toronto about the Union and Toronto FC discussing a trade involving Freddy Adu, most people wrote it off as an invention of a fan in the country up north trying to prove how easy it was to start gossip.

However, the Brotherly Game was informed that while there may have been independent creation of such a rumor, the two teams in fact have talked about such a deal.

A team official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Brotherly Game that the two sides had progressed in their preliminary negotiations on moving Adu out of Philadelphia. The official went so far as to say that it's possible that a trade could occur relatively soon.

Adu, 24, has been on the outs in Philadelphia ever since head coach John Hackworth publicly declare that the former American international had rejected to participate in negotiations to lower his salary and change his team role, leaving the team with its choice of selling, loaning, trading or benching the controversial player.

At over $500,000 a year, Adu's status as the highest paid member of the team put him at odds with some of his teammates due to his attitude and caused a few locker room problems after he joined Philadelphia in August of 2011.

The attacking midfielder was linked to the Blackburn Rovers prior to the end of the English transfer window and refused to move down the American soccer pyramid, according to Hackworth, leaving his future after the Union as a large question mark.

If the trade was to go through, Adu would be reunited with former DC United executive Kevin Payne and former teammate, and new Toronto head coach, Ryan Nelsen.