His place within United States’s soccer culture has made him a lightning rod for praise and criticism, but no matter the side of the divide on which you fall (or if you fall through the middle), Landon Donovan’s loan to Everton FC in England represents a landmark moment in United States soccer history.

Whether you feel the moment is critical or will be a turning point is another matter, but Donovan’s domestic success and player for the national team has always been juxtaposed against European club failures. Now in the prime of his career and having just signed a lucrative contract with Major League Soccer, Donovan has rolled the dice on another European sojourn knowing that he will give one side of the debate a potentially lethal arrow for their quiver.

To talk about the sojourn’s first step, I welcomes World Soccer Reader’s Los Angeles Galaxy correspondent, Jared Dubois. Jared is a self-professed Galaxy fan who also had been able to fall within that divide between the debate’s two sides. In turn, Jared had a measured view of Donovan’s Everton debut. I talk to him about that as well as the English reaction, which was overwhelmingly position.

Donovan’s first match has to be looked upon as a building block. I don’t agree with the English critics that were glowing in the praise. I thought he had a good, possibly merely average match. He did some very good things moving the ball, particularly switching play in a way you don’t often see from the Toffees. But he also lacked the energy you need to have in the Premier League, a deficiency particularly noticable in defense, where he would at times be seen walking while players like Marouane Fellaini and Leon Osman stayed poised on their toes.

On Arsenal’s first goal the criticism of Donovan should not be that he did not clear a ball that was difficult to handle; rather, in the moment the ball was leaving the Everton area, his first instinct was to let-up. You can see him start to straighten-up before realizing the play was not resolved, costing him valuable time he could have used to close-down Denilson.

With the bad defensively and the good in attack, the match was a mixed-bag, but all the issues Donovan had could be chalked up to unfamiliarity. Going forward, his instincts will develop as he becomes more acclimated to the English game.

As we discuss on this edition of Inside the Six, Saturday was a great building block for Landon Donovan’s next ten weeks.

Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed to get the latest breaking news and analysis!