His suspension served, Freddy Adu practiced with his D.C. United teammates yesterday in Washington, D.C., and the prevailing sentiment was: Can't we stop talking about last week's flap?

Coach Peter Nowak feels that way. So does team president Kevin Payne. Captain Jaime Moreno and other players, too.

Whatever Adu thinks, he's keeping it to himself for now, and he declined to speak to the media yesterday, team spokesman Doug Hicks said. Of course, it was a chat with reporters that began this mini-brouhaha. Adu vented last Tuesday, saying a lack of playing time hurt his chances of making the U.S. World Cup team and made him think about leaving D.C. United.

"It's done as far as I'm concerned. Freddy maybe learned a lesson," midfielder Ben Olsen said. "He said some stuff, he got punished, and now it's done."

Nowak suspended Adu for Friday's playoff game at the Chicago Fire, a 0-0 tie. But the 16-year-old playmaker is in the mix to appear Sunday in the second leg of the home-and-home series.

"Freddy is back in the group, preparing for this game, and we believe that with the right mind-set he can be helpful for us," Nowak said. "We all know he's a great player, a great team player."

The consensus around the club appeared to be that Adu shouldn't have taken his complaint public; that he's a good kid, but still a kid ("Freddy's 16. This is part of the learning process," Payne said); and that, as Moreno put it, "It was a little bit bad that it was so close to a playoff."

At 14, Adu became the youngest player in MLS history, and he also happened to be the league's highest-paid player. From the outset, his age and potential drew plenty of attention.

"My first reaction is that it's Freddy, out of a lack of experience, expressing frustration over something that he probably needs to have a little bit broader perspective on," Payne said. "Unfortunately, it gets turned into a huge deal because it's Freddy."

And Payne pointed out that Adu appeared in all 25 regular-season games for which he was available in 2005, with 16 starts, and averaged 60 minutes per game.

"At D.C. United, we have a way of doing things ... and people have to sublimate their egos and their selfish interests to the best interests of the group," Payne said.

U.S. TO PLAY SCOTLAND

The U.S. soccer team will play an exhibition game at Scotland on Nov. 12, one of the last times before mid-May that the Americans will be able to gather most of their roster in preparation for the World Cup.

The game, played on a day the top European leagues are idle, will be at Hampden Park. One complication, however, is that the Major League Soccer championship game will be played the following day, which likely would cause U.S. coach Bruce Arena to bypass players on the finalists.

Scotland has been eliminated from European qualifying. The teams haven't played since a 0-0 tie at Washington on May 30, 1998.