It’s hard to know where to start here. But start we must. This is important for reasons beyond the pale.

Eric Wynalda, the former USMNT striker once considered The Best Finisher In The Colors, has never rated Alejandro Bedoya in any particular fashion. This is fine, really. Bedoya is in most respects an overwhelmingly average midfielder in the international sense. He’s made his career on Hustle Points, racing up and down the flank or – as Klinsmann’s bizarre deployment strategy would have it – the defensive midfield to blunt attacks and form the basis for new ones.

This is the spill-out. Bedoya shamefully attacked Wynalda for an episode in 1998 Wynalda would no doubt count one of the worst moments of his life. All over a pileup of criticism that pooled into Bedoya’s forgettable performance in an otherwise laudable 4-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago.

My only answer to that is I don’t know- there are many that rate him- I believe there are many who are better //t.co/IrmRDpozq6 — Eric Wynalda (@EricWynalda) September 7, 2016

Bedoya tepidly recanted his words midday on Wednesday – “my bad” – before calling into Wynalda’s frankly underrated WTF show later in the evening to clear the air. You can hear all four-plus minutes of that here.

This is all just fine. I’m sure Wynalda and Bedoya could meet up in an alley somewhere and the knives would not even fly out of their sheathes. Athletes, even former ones, are notoriously thought forward, and locker room ethos isn’t hard to pin down. You speak, you air grievances, you accept or you deny and then you move on with everything. Agreement isn’t necessary so much as some vague sense of harmony is. You have to get along to get along, so they say. This has never been so evident as in locker rooms.

And yet it does not always happen. People have opinions. And Bedoya, unfortunately, displayed the inability to deal with one.

Bedoya’s ultimate point was not so much that Wynalda had a grievance with his performance against T&T, but rather that he’s had grievances stretching far deeper than that. Wynalda has been critical of Bedoya for some time now, that his utility doesn’t reach that of others and that other midfielders would be better served getting opportunities. I am on record as saying that while Bedoya’s ultimate point for the USMNT is understandable, there is merit here. Bedoya is hustle over technique at the expense of youth. Whatever you feel about his contribution.

Here is Bedoya’s main point of argument directed to Wynalda from the aforementioned radio interview.

“I think there’s something personal that you have against me or something, where I just don’t feel like it’s ever been an objective analysis towards me as a player. It’s just something where I can get that you can dislike me as a player – I’m not your Hispanic-American type of player you’d want on your team or whatever – but I feel like somebody who has done a lot for the game and who is still trying to do a lot for the game here. I feel like I just don’t get the fair share from your part.”

This is troublesome from a variety of angles. Doubly so from somebody as smart as Bedoya, who should know better. But it is not an anomaly. Players take criticism personally. Pundits view it rationally, or at least the ones worth mentioning do, and it’s certainly impossible to ascribe Wynalda with anything aside from rationality here (even if that has not always been his MO). Eventually something will give, and the loudest voices are inevitably the ones with the million-dollar sponsorships and the jerseys.

Allow me to reach back to a July interview DeAndre Yedlin gave to Sound of Soccer, a podcast I’m involved with here in Seattle. In the midst of waxing poetic on a variety of subjects, he weighed in on the media involvement with the Copa America, where the U.S. incurred some notable turbulence.

“Honestly that was kind of a very big talking point between the team, is that after one game (a 2-0 loss against Colombia) I think the media was all over us. It’s almost kind of like they wanted it to happen. That’s how we felt. Almost like they wanted us to be bad. I don’t know if that’s because the media has some sort of thing against Jurgen, or if they actually have some sort of thing against the team. But it seems like right now, with everything, it’s almost seems like U.S. Soccer is divided right now. Not us (internally), I’m saying the media doesn’t like Jurgen, or the media are making it a battle between the men’s team and the women’s team because of the whole equal pay thing. It seems like it’s almost divided in a way.”

There is a serious, intrinsic divide here between that which the team itself perceives as persecution and that which the media – including former players – sees as objective criticism. To Yedlin’s point, the idea that any significant subsection of U.S. soccer media would see the USMNT lose out of some personal vendetta expressed through public writing is patently absurd. But it’s not hard to see how, in their zealous pursuit to win at all costs, they might see consistent criticism as an agenda.

It is not an agenda. It is critical consistency, the only combatant a pundit has against self incrimination.

At his root, Bedoya is an overwhelmingly Klinsmann player. He is not overtly technical – Klinsmann developed the nickname ‘pin-ball’ among his German national team compatriots for his lack of close ball control – but he is unfailingly effort forward. And, like Yedlin, he owes his national career to Klinsmann, a man about whom he’d never be openly critical for that very reason.

Minutes later, Yedlin said this about Klinsmann. This is an instructive lesson about what makes a Klinsmann Guy.

“For me, people always ask me do I like Jurgen. For me, Jurgen has been one of the most exceptional coaches that I’ve had. For one, he’s given me the chance, and I think that’s the biggest thing. I wasn’t playing at Tottenham and he’s calling me into camps. And I don’t know how much people know about it, but that’s unheard of. If you’re not playing, you don’t get called in, you’re not in form, you’re not fit. But he called me and said I want to keep you in form, I want to keep you fit. And that was huge, because it showed the trust he had in me.”

Opportunity. Not tactics, or reason, or personal tactical coaching. Opportunity.

For one, it is not all that unprecedented under Klinsmann to call in out-of-form players not getting run-ins with their club teams, no matter his lip service. Ask Brek Shea. But this gets at a deeper psychological trend that players deeply loyal to Klinsmann – Yedlins and Zardeses and Bedoyas – owe their careers to Klinsmann in some respect. It doesn’t much matter if what Klinsmann is doing makes any logical sense. As players, he’s stoking their careers. And you expect them to criticize the hand that extends them bread? Of course not. They will never.

It’s not at all suspect to see Wynalda’s criticisms, borne out over time as consistently as they’ve been, as valid and lacking all circumspection. Bedoya is not above criticism, not just for his performance against T&T but over the course of his national team career. There have been moments where Bedoya looked like the most committed player on the field. If Wynalda praised those, they would not have made it back to him. What inevitably does reach Bedoya’s eyes are the moments – and they are more numerable from a logical and completely unbiased perspective – when Bedoya lost a marker or fell down on his attacking duties.

The point is that Wynalda is not being petty, or personal, or vindictive. He is being an objective and unerringly consistent observer, which is obvious to anyone who’s seen Bedoya play over the past few years. Bedoya is occasionally good, frequently all-action and almost always lacking in incisiveness. That isn’t personal. It’s objective fact pulled from observation. If Wynalda is guilty of anything, it is sticking to that opinion to hardily.

Athletes pull motivation from a variety of sources. The media is a trope too old to document. If there is a general need to demonize rational, objective opinion to find motivational fire, then so be it. But to then blame those coals for being unnaturally critical and personally vindictive? The barrel rings hollow.