Some soccer sites are floating the rumor that an MLS team is interested in Lee Nguyen, making it possible that the 22-year-old Vietnamese-American star striker may not be playing in Vietnam after all.
The rumor is mentioned briefly on tribalfootball.com and soccer365.com. Those two sites have no mention of the name of the MLS team with said alleged interest.
One site, here, suggests that the team might be the Colorado Rockets. The basis for such claim, however, is something “a close friend of mine sent it along” that consists of the story in Goal magazine (reprinted in Sports Illustrated), plus one paragraph that wasn’t in the original.
The provenance of the rumor thus seems a little doubtful.
Born in Texas, Lee Nguyen is currently playing in Denmark for Randers FC. His contract is set to expire in summer 2009.
In 2005, when he was 18, Nguyen (whom fans call by his first name Lee) became the only high school player to be named in the USA under-20 team for the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship. As a senior, he was named the 2004-05 Gatorade National Boy Soccer Player of the Year.
After high school, Nguyen declined pro offers and moved from Dallas to Bloomington to play for NCAA powerhouse Indiana University. He was named Freshman of the Year by Soccer Times and Soccer America magazines.
After his freshman year, Nguyen went pro and joined the Dutch team PSV Eindhoven, where he was coached by Guss Hiddink, the former coach of Real Madrid who has also led the national teams of South Korea and Australia and is currently coaching Russia’s national team.
It would be nice to watch Lee Nguyen playing in L.A.!
He is very clever.