Underappreciated McBride a work of art in progress

	In three seasons at Fulham, Brian McBride has thrived as a tough, dependable striker. Christopher Lee/Getty Images
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I root for Brian McBride, no matter what. And I say that not because I've known him since we were both 14-year-old whippersnappers at the Region II Olympic Development tournament in Grinnell, Iowa.

No, I say that because McBride is just one of those players who is impossible not to root for. If you don't like McBride, you probably hate toys, too.

McBride is not a ballet dancer like Cristiano Ronaldo or a tropical storm like Didier Drogba or a bulldog like Wayne Rooney or a drag-racer like Craig Bellamy. He is an effective workhorse.

This season with Fulham -- which takes on Charlton Athletic on Wednesday -- McBride has a team-high five goals in 19 appearances, and is on pace to equal or better his tally of 10 goals from last season. Since he arrived at Craven Cottage in 2004 -- and debuted by scoring a late winner in a 2-1 win over Tottenham -- he has scored 29 goals in the Premiership.

But McBride's not about numbers. He's about everything that the game requires that can't be calculated or statistic-ized. He doesn't have highlight reels on YouTube (well, he might, but every time I go to check, I'm distracted by some kid in China lip-syncing Backstreet Boys) and rarely appears in the transfer gossip columns.

He runs to make up for any lack of divine talent. In fact, he runs all ... day ... long. And he throws his body around like a lip-pierced punk in a Black Flag mosh pit, unafraid to go into a head-on tackle at midfield or stick his square-jawed noggin into the tempest on corner kicks.

It's these immeasurable "little things," as coaches like to say, the bruising battering often bloodying things that make him so heroic. It's these things that make us root for him no matter what. The fact that he does it all with a smile and says all the right things in the locker room and in the press, make us like him even more.

But we will never love him. A fan's love demands more than sweat and grit and being good in the air. It demands little things of a different ilk: magic, illusion, artistry. A touch of the unexplainable, rather than the mundane immeasurable.

Ever since my former New England Revolution teammate, John Kerr Jr., went over to Portsmouth in '87 and later to Millwall in '92, the U.S. has been represented overseas by dogged McBride types -- John Harkes, my brother Alexi, Joe-Max Moore, DaMarcus Beasley, Carlos Bocanegra, Cory Gibbs, Jay DeMerit. Craftsman rather than artists.

And whenever an American artist has gone over, he has either failed (see: Clint Mathis and Landon Donovan) or adjusted his game to be more workmanlike than quixotic (see: Eric Wynalda and Claudio Reyna).

Perhaps it's an inevitable larval stage in the evolution of the American player: You must prove that you can survive the rigors of the European game before you are allowed to even attempt to thrive. It happened that way in hockey, albeit going the other direction.

In the 1960s, there were no Europeans in the NHL. The ones who tried were skillful but wimpy, tall Swedes and Finns with lots of grace and no guts. Then Börje Salming signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1973 and proved there were Europeans who could skate and hit. Since then, of course, the NHL has filled up with Euros all loaded with skill but also tough enough to survive. Salming went into the Hockey Hall of Fame in '96.

McBride is not quite Börje Salming, but he is the precursor. The Ichthyostega. (Look it up. That's what Google is for.) In just three years with Fulham, plus his various loan spells with Preston North End and Everton, McBride has paved the way for the first American artist to go overseas and actually be an artist.

Paging Mr. Clint Dempsey.