This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end. Not after how it began; with billboards, with videos, with bespoke snapbacks. With pomp and circumstance worthy of a player who’d sojourned to the Champions’ League, not the Tippeligaen.
That’s the elemental paradox of Mikkel Morgenstar Pålssønn Diskerud. To a certain kind of fan, Diskerud has always been the future of the USMNT, and always will be. When he arrived in Gotham, he arrived to glorious expectation — a young American star, paired with David Villa’s Iberian scoring punch and awaiting Frank Lampard’s Britannic tutelage in the midfield.
The reality was starkly different.