Philadelphia Phenoms: The Most Amazing Athletes to Play in the City of Brotherly Love

SEBASTIEN LE TOUX

1Despite being the most decorated player in the brief history of the Philadelphia Union, Sebastien Le Toux has only played four seasons in Philadelphia. He is by far the youngest and has thus far garnered the fewest accolades of all the athletes in this book.

In spite of that, Le Toux is the Union’s all-time leader in goals and assists, he scored the franchise’s first goal, became its first All-Star, and recorded its only hat trick and only playoff goal. Along the way, he has become one of the most popular athletes in a city that is famously, gleefully hard on its superstars. In a city that booed Mike Schmidt and made Donovan McNabb a pariah, Le Toux enjoys near-universal popularity among fans. It’s a little disconcerting, even for Le Toux himself.

I don’t know if everyone likes me, Le Toux said, but I know I have a good popularity with the people. I’ve never had anybody being mean to me—I’ve always tried to be nice to them because they’re always nice to me.

Being nice helps, but the source of Le Toux’s popularity has as much to do with his accomplishments as with his attitude. Sebastien Le Toux was born on January 10, 1984 in Mont-Saint-Aignan, France. He grew up in Rennes, a city of about 200,000 in Brittany, where he supported the local soccer club and tagged along with his older brother to play pickup games.

It was a dream, I was just young, Le Toux said. My first time was watching a game on TV; I wanted to be on the field one day. The first time I’d think about it, like, this was exactly what I want to do, was the first time my dad brought me to a live game in France. I was just sitting in the stands, I was too small I couldn’t have a seat, so I was in the stairs, and I knew that I wanted one day to be on the field.

Le Toux came up as a right back in the youth academy at the local club, Stade Rennais FC, a middle-class club in the Ligue 1, the French first division. Le Toux wasn’t offered a contract when he graduated from the Rennes academy, so at age 20, he signed a two-year deal with Lorient, a second-division club, where he played intermittently as the club won promotion in 2006.

As a free agent for the first time, Le Toux, then 22, took his career in a different direction entirely.

I stayed eight months without contract, going here and there, with a few tryouts, but nothing really excited me, Le Toux said. I didn’t want to play third division.

In 2007, he picked up and moved to the Seattle Sounders, then playing in the USL, the second tier of American soccer, and moved to forward. For the first time, everything clicked.

I got the opportunity to come to America for a tryout, and it was the first time I left France; I’d never gone outside France to play, and I just loved it, Le Toux said. I love to speak English, I love the people here, the life, everything around . . . I don’t know, it just made it so easy for me to decide that I wanted to stay here and play, even if the money was not the same as in Europe.

Le Toux was the USL’s MVP his first season. He scored 24 goals in 54 games, and when the Sounders made the move up to MLS for the 2009 season, Le Toux was the first player they signed. Le Toux led the U.S. Open Cup in scoring in each of his three seasons with the Sounders, who reached the semifinals in 2007 and 2008 before winning it all in 2009.

His first season in MLS was a little less fortuitous. Seattle brought in Colombian phenom Freddy Montero and MLS veteran Nate Jaqua to play striker, forcing Le Toux into midfield, where he battled for playing time with former Sweden captain and Arsenal superstar Freddie Ljungberg. Suddenly on the periphery of the team, Le Toux scored only one goal in 28 games (15 starts) and found himself unprotected in the MLS Expansion Draft.

On the other side of the continent, the Union had taken notice.

Union manager Peter Nowak and top assistant John Hackworth, both former head coaches of US youth teams and assistants to Bob Bradley at the senior level, saw potential in Le Toux, even in spite of his uneven playing in 2009.

We thought we were getting a player who had potential to score, said Hackworth, who succeeded Nowak as head coach and served in that capacity until June 2014. Any time you can do it at a professional level, I think that’s a really good sign. You always have to make a transition to the next higher level, but it’s a difficult job to say, hey, this guy playing now is going to be this in the future.

While some MLS teams break the bank on high-profile international-level stars, the Union has always favored a more conservative approach. While Seattle, for instance, went after Ljungberg and former US international goalkeeper Kasey Keller for its first season, Philadelphia’s biggest name was arguably the manager, Nowak, who’d won the MLS Cup as both a player and a manager. Nowak made notable moves for U.S. international defender Danny Califf, who became the club’s first captain, as well as 2008 Olympians Chris Seitz and Michael Orozco. The big offensive names were first-round draft picks Jack McInerney and Danny Mwanga, both of whom were viewed as long-term prospects rather than immediate impact players.

The first thing the coach, Peter Nowak, said when he picked me was ‘We want to see you as a forward for our team.’ It was a relief, that I could show again that I could play forward, Le Toux said.

Le Toux started at forward and played the full 90 minutes in the Union’s first-ever game, a messy 2-0 loss away to Le Toux’s old club, the Seattle Sounders. Two weeks later, he got the start for the Union’s first-ever home game, which, because the team’s purpose-built stadium in Chester hadn’t been completed in time, was played in front of 34,870 fans at Lincoln Financial Field. Which brings us back to why Sebastien Le Toux is one of Philadelphia’s most beloved athletes.

Sebastien Le Toux (Vosie)

There was so much emotion in that day, Hackworth said. I was living down at Dockside at the time and I went for a run through Old City, and nobody knew who I was, or I didn’t think they knew. But every block, people were saying ‘Good Luck!’ or ‘Go Union.’ It was pretty cool, and it just kept building up toward the game.

The occasion wasn’t lost on Le Toux either: It was kind of amazing to walk around before the game, to see the stands empty. I remember coming onto the field and shaking the hand of Vice President Joe Biden, and you could see that the stands were kind of half full, half empty, and that was weird.

Once the game started, things only got crazier. Le Toux took a fifth-minute cross from Roger Torres and beat D.C. United goalkeeper Troy Perkins for the first goal in franchise history. He scored again in the 40th minute on a breakaway to double his league tally from the season before.

When I scored the second goal, Le Toux said, I didn’t know why, but it would get louder. People told me after the game that lots of people got into the game after about 10 minutes, because they were late because of all the security and stuff.

United tied the game in the second half, but with 10 minutes to play, Le Toux completed his hat trick on a free kick. The Union held on for the first win in franchise history and the first chapter of a love affair between fans and player.

The home opener against United was also the coming-out party for the Union supporters’ group, the Sons of Ben, who quickly came up with a tribute song for their new leading scorer.

I know they have one, Le Toux said, Because they sang it all the time in my first two years: Oh, Le Toux, Le Toux . . . something like You’re Frencher than me or you . . . You’ll score us a goal or two, or three—because of the hat trick. It’s not very good lyrics, but it’s the one I hear every time I see them.

To hear Le Toux tell it, he became the most popular player on the team more or less by default.

I think that because this team was new, Le Toux said, you need a player or two to be good for the team, so people can recognize the team because of those players. Like if I [say]: ‘Galaxy,’ you would say ‘David Beckham’ or ‘[Landon] Donovan.’

Maybe. But Philadelphia sports fans love their own particular sports culture almost as much as they love the games themselves: they want an emotional investment. Their heroes aren’t just great players; they also need to have Chase Utley’s sneering self-confidence, Brian Dawkins’ soul-baring emotion or Bobby Clarke’s all-consuming desire to win, within or without the rules. Philadelphia fans are obsessed not only with winning and community, but also with making sure the athletes they cheer for understand the culture that supports them.

And while some Eagles fans might sneer at soccer, Union fans, as a group, are the same, only younger and dressed in scarves instead of shoulder pads.

Le Toux is a skilled player with keen vision, a good first touch, and a penchant for well-placed curling free kicks. He’s tall and undeniably athletic, but like many soccer players, he’s too skinny to be particularly imposing. Far from playing with the smoldering anger of Allen Iverson, for instance, Le Toux is relentlessly upbeat—Hackworth mentioned Le Toux’s energy and optimism as one of his best qualities as a teammate. In person, he’s extremely self-assured, but also polite, humble, and patient. Scoring goals will make you a fan favorite, but Le Toux also has a knack for dealing with passionate and demanding fans.

Seba’s a great ambassador for the club, in the way that he signs autographs and goes out of his way to be in the community, Hackworth said. If anyone requested something of him, he really took it to heart. It says a lot about Seba, the way [he] interacts with fans.

But Le Toux is relentless on the field, and that, Hackworth says, is what sets him apart.

Soccer is a game where sometimes it takes a long time to break down another team, Hackworth said. "And as the game gets later into the first half or second half, it seems like that’s where Seba, he’s just getting going, and that’s where he really gets recognized.

We have all these cool analysis tools now that we look at speed of a player, sprints, distance covered. What Seba does is he doesn’t get slower as the game goes on. He can maintain his level throughout, and that’s a fantastic thing for a player to do. It takes a lot of heart and determination, but it also takes a very fit athlete.

Le Toux finished 2010 as the Union’s leading scorer, with 14 goals and 11 assists. Freddy Montero, his former Seattle teammate, was the only other player in MLS to reach double figures in both categories. Le Toux started the All-Star game that year and, along with the Union, built on that success in 2011. Veteran goalie Faryd Mondragon joined the team along with defender Carlos Valdez. Those two, along with Sheanon Williams, in his first full year as a starter, transformed what had been at times a calamitous backline into one of the league’s best. The Union went 11-8-15, good for third in the Eastern Conference and the team’s first-ever playoff berth. They lost to Houston Dynamo 3-1 on aggregate (the one goal was Le Toux’s, of course), but the signs were good going into 2012.

That’s when everything went wrong.

In January 2012, the Union brought Le Toux back from his offseason vacation to go on trial with the Bolton Wanderers of the English Premier League. Bolton, locked in a relegation battle, was looking for reinforcements in the winter transfer window and hoped Le Toux and New York Red Bulls defender Tim Ream could strengthen the team.

Le Toux, who had one year left on his contract and was more interested in an extension than a move back to Europe, was less than enthusiastic.

I said, ‘no, I don’t want to,’ Le Toux said. I talked a couple months [before] with [Union CEO] Nick Sakiewicz and he said he wanted to offer me a new contract. It’s not about the money I could get over there—I want to stay in Philadelphia, I’m happy here, and I want to keep building this franchise.

Le Toux arrived in England jet-lagged and far from his midseason form. Almost immediately he picked up a foot injury and failed to impress. Nevertheless, Bolton’s coaching staff wanted him to extend his tryout another week, but the day they were supposed to meet to discuss the extension, they were in London nailing down the terms of Ream’s permanent transfer. Le Toux flew home the next day.

He returned to find Nowak furious that he’d cut short his trial. The disagreement led to the end of Le Toux’s relationship with Nowak, who traded the franchise’s first star to the Vancouver Whitecaps shortly after.

[Nowak] really lied to my face, and I hate that, Le Toux said. I’m very easy to forgive for whatever happened, if it’s an honest mistake, but the fact that he really played with my career and my life, and the fact that I knew he wanted to sell me for money and never told me about it . . . If he’d come to me and said, ‘Seba, it’d be great if we could sell you for this amount because the team needs money,’ I’d say, ‘Okay, but I want to stay here.’

The fans, already confused and appalled by Le Toux’s abrupt departure, weren’t soothed by an incendiary interview Le Toux gave with Chris Vito of the Delaware County Times shortly after the trade, in which Le Toux said he’d retire rather than play for Nowak again.

I left for a year and I know it was heartbreaking for me, and for [the fans] too, Le Toux said. Like I tried to tell them, I didn’t choose to leave like that—they sent me away. It was not my choice.

Le Toux’s year away from Philadelphia wasn’t without its positives, however. He scored only five regular-season goals between his stints in Vancouver and New York, but his time with the Red Bulls brought him together with a player he’d looked up to as a teenager: Thierry Henry.

Henry was a key member of the French national team when Les Bleus won the World Cup in 1998 and the European championship in 2000. Henry went on to become one of the world’s greatest players in stints for Arsenal and Barcelona before joining the Red Bulls in 2010.

It was very nice, Le Toux said. I watched him on TV in my youth when he won the World Cup for France. I didn’t know him personally, so it was a great occasion for me to see how he is as a man compared to as a soccer player. I knew he was a fantastic soccer player . . . and he is a great human being too.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the progress that had been made in 2011 was reversed in 2012. Mondragon left before the season to finish his career in his home nation of Colombia, and during the season, Califf and Mwanga were traded away as well as the Union slid back toward the bottom of the table. By mid-June, Union ownership had fired Nowak and replaced him with Hackworth, who looked for a familiar face with whom to start rebuilding.

One of the first things I thought about when I had the opportunity as the interim head coach was ‘Can we get Seba back here?’ Hackworth said. Sometimes these things are much clearer after the fact, but that was a move that I think if we, as an organization, had to do over again, we probably wouldn’t do it.

Le Toux returned to Philadelphia about 10 months after he left, in exchange for allocation money and midfielder Josué Martínez. He found many things that were different. For one, his relationship with Hackworth was changed. Additionally, the team to which he returned was somewhat different.

For instance, McInerney had not only replaced Le Toux in the No. 9 jersey, but also he had cemented his place as the team’s starting center forward.

John likes to play a 4-3-3, which is a little bit different than what I like, Le Toux said. I like to play in a 4-4-2 as a forward, but the way we play right now with all the good players we have in the midfield, we have more possession, so it’s nice to receive more balls so I can finish in front of the goal.

Le Toux scored only three goals for the Union in 2013, but made up for it with a career-high 12 assists in his new supporting role. Even though he’s not playing his preferred position, Le Toux isn’t particularly bothered.

My goal is not to score the most goals or to be the star of this team, but that every year we do well—at minimum, we make the playoffs.

Just past his thirtieth birthday, the age where outfield players tend to start slowing down, Le Toux embraces his role as a veteran leader and mentor for players like forward Andrew Wenger without considering the end of his own career (Just because I’m thirty, maybe people say you’re old, but I don’t think you’re old when you’re thirty—I think you’re old when you’re sixty, he said), and intends to play at least five more years, more if possible, and preferably all in