re: What has happened to Michael Bradley?

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I need wm72 to give us the lowdown on whether he was ever really as good as we thought at Chievo.

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Depends on how good people thought he was at Chievo and Roma. . .

There seems to be a large contingent US fans that you read elsewhere online who live in a bit of a la la land about US players/MLS etc. . .

I recall reading online that Bradley was better than De Rossi and had beaten him out. . . . While Bradley did start at DM for Roma when De Rossi was benched for staging an outright rebellion against Zeman's wild tactics, Bradley was nowhere near De Rossi level ever.

However, Bradley was a hell of lot better than he's played for the US team the past couple of years.

Bradley was never a world beater in the attacking third for Roma (though he would pick some good vertical long balls in counter attacks and occasionally dribble defenders to make some very nice runs that opened attacking spaces).

However, what you could always count on from him was holding onto the ball when pressed, making good simple decisions -- not getting turned over -- and be very solid simply playing basic passes against pressure without costly giveaways. At both Chievo and Roma, you could count on that against every midfield in the league, including ones with players like Vidal, Nainggolan etc pressing him.

That's not been the case the past two seasons. I agree with the posters above that see him as just not seeming up to the speed of the game at higher levels these days.