Jordan Morris is probably choosing to stay home.

There is an old truism in life that you do your best work out of a place of comfort. This is often mistaken for a vague idea of something called a ‘comfort zone,’ and I’d like to wave away those clouds here. In reality, the notion of motivation dovetails into two definitive camps with a million branching sub-genres: those who are motivated by circumstance and those who are motivated by surroundings.

It is easy to survey from a high position and say that all players are made better by more competitive environs, regardless of their physical location. The Bundesliga is better than MLS, and therefore any Bundesliga club is better than any MLS club for every player. The fact that we are dealing with humanity, and not mathematical equations, makes this a farcical idea. It may be better for more players more often than not, but what is the percentage here? 70? 60? 51?

How do we know Morris made the “right” decision by choosing Seattle? Because it’s the decision he made. Perhaps the biggest travesty of the Klinsmann era is this notional split between Europe and the U.S., that there is almost a defensive catch among those who would choose MLS. After all, consider the following scenario.

Let’s say Morris, in his post-national championship reverie, was readying his pen for his Sounders Homegrown deal. He is from Seattle. His father has been the Sounders team doctor for years. He will learn from Dempsey and Martins. He has all but made up his mind. And let’s say Klinsmann, eager to toss his golden forward into the fires of Europe to prepare him for 2018, tells Morris U23 coach Andi Herzog’s connections have won him a trial at Werder Bremen. Why not have a look?

What to do if you are a 21-year-old with USMNT aspirations? Perhaps Morris, not wanting to jeopardize his national team chances by evading a trial brought forth by his own coaches, did it to placate. He almost certainly would’ve signed with Seattle outright had Werder Bremen not been brought forward in the first place. I asked the question after the national title game of whether he’d made up his mind to join the Sounders or not. He didn’t say he was keeping his options open. He said he didn’t want to suck the spotlight away from the moment.

Are we to believe that Morris did not go to Germany already wanting to sign for Seattle? I find it hard to believe otherwise.

If we are to judge Morris’s motivations by his past, his motivational fire is clearly fed by the furnace of his surroundings. There is something to admire in this day and age in a player who flouts the typical pathways to pro soccer and stays in college for not one or two but three years. For those who’ve actually watched him play at Stanford, and those who actually watched him play as a Sounders academy player, he has seasoned himself in his college cocoon. Cardinal coach Jeremy Gunn has done admirable work on the forward. He is better because of college which is perhaps more than the narrative allows, but maybe don’t tell those who would only see him in Europe. I don’t think they’d hear it.

One thing I have heard little of in the past weeks is how bad Werder Bremen is. They currently sit in a relegation place in the Bundesliga, but that only paws at the team’s brutish, neanderthal soccer.

Werder Bremen is currently second-to-last in the league in short passes per game, and their total of 278 would actually put them behind the 2015 San Jose Earthquakes, who were the most direct and anemic MLS team last season. A team that plays more direct than the 2015 Quakes is not one that deserves your sympathy. Further, the current team-wide pass success rate of 67.8 is very, very bad. To be a forward in that system is to see your service shot at you like a scatter of ball bearings fired out of a broken T-shirt cannon.

This is not to say the Sounders are a definitively better team in a back-to-back comparison, but that the fit pulls on more like a worn glove creased with comfort and use.

With the benefit of years of hindsight, I think the ultimate difference, if there even is one, in the way we look at Morris and the way we looked at Landon Donovan will be telling. Donovan will always be viewed as the great what-if of American soccer’s breakthrough generation. What if his time in Germany had clicked? Would he not be more of a player than he ultimately became? A faster thinker, quicker operator, better technician?

If players were sentient mechs and teams were the same in all places and skill sets were predictable in that way, then I might be inclined to agree. But as much as we watch soccer, we don’t really know why some players don’t thrive in high pressure environments and some hit their stride closer to home. It is all in the gray matter, and acting as though we can predict – or even suggest – that simply because it is Germany it is good for the player… well, then the 21st century is exploding at the seams with hubris.

I will shout this from as many rooftops as I can until I am dead; Landon Donovan would not have been appreciably better had he played his entire career in Germany. He would have probably been worse, separated from the life-giving hookup of his homeland and left to shrivel, mentally. Why didn’t Francesco Totti leave Rome to win Champions Leagues in England or with Milan or wherever? Because he is Roman. To be otherwise would be to separate himself from himself.

That’s not to say the two are the same player, or even made the same mental decision for the same precise reasons. But while they are rare, there must be room made for those players who’ve opted for home because it completes them as players. Some simply will not thrive elsewhere.

Whether or not Morris is quite as mentally delicate as Donovan, I can’t say. But I can say that after watching Morris with some consistency for nearly four years, he has been fed by the fires of home.

I do think that for many American players, Europe is the way, but it cannot be the only way. It is perilous at both ends. Shaq Moore left for Spain and is not being paid. Jozy Altidore probably set himself back by playing in England, but most certainly did at an awful Sunderland. Michael Bradley had lost his roster spot in Rome.

This is all to say that there are splotches of gray in the midst of the black and white we are constantly painted, a gentle reminder that as ever, we are dealing with human beings with futures they grasp better than the braying masses. Like Donovan before him, maybe there is a lock that simply cannot be picked without an American key. I think we have to allow for that.

Otherwise we have dehumanized the athletes for whom we root, and made them something other than men.