Ricardo Clark still remembers the first time he saw Michael Bradley play. It was 2003, during Clark's rookie campaign with the New York/New Jersey MetroStars. Bradley wasn't anything close to the star he has become. He wasn't even a professional -- just a 17-year-old kid trying to show he could hang with some of Major League Soccer's finest. Bradley didn't blink.
"He jumped into one of our training sessions," said Clark during a recent phone conversation. "He was very young at the time but you could tell he had potential, that's for sure."
Over the next 14 years, Bradley reached that potential and then some.