Hunting seasons in most parts of the world are of limited duration.  A month maybe. A few weeks. The rest of the year the creatures on the other side of the guns can live in peace.

Landon Donovan, however, tends to be targeted by many U.S. soccer fans every day of the year. It’s always open season on Landon.

The latest? The reaction to the L.A. Galaxy’s announcement that Landon will return to the team in the last week of March — after the club will have played three Major League Soccer games and two Champions League matches. It was predictably negative.

All the more so because Landon’s planned return means he will not be with the U.S. national team, which suddenly looks quite vulnerable, for a Concacaf Brazil 2014 World Cup qualifier home match with Costa Rica on March 22 and the away match in Mexico on March 26.

Jason Davis of espn.com decried Landon’s “lack of urgency”, both for the Galaxy and the national team. The subtext being that Landon should live his life around the needs of the national team as well as the Galaxy.

A few facts being overlooked by those criticizing Landon:

–He made clear way back in October what he was contemplating. He said he needed “time where I can just pause, and breathe and rest, let my body heal, let my mind refresh, and I think at that point, I’ll be excited to play again”. He delivered no schedule.

–It is not at all clear that Jurgen Klinsmann even cares to have Landon on the U.S. national team. He ought to care. But he is from Germany, see, and he knows how to run a team. That he is coaching Americans and not Germans (on the whole), well, never mind. He will do what he knows, even if it leads to a 2-1 defeat at Honduras in the opener of the final round of Concacaf qualifying.

–Even if Landon decides his international career is over … the man is allowed to do that. Others have done it before him, most notably Brad Friedel, who pretty much quit playing for the U.S. after the 2002 World Cup, when he was 31, and made it formal in 2005.

Friedel is still playing in England, at age 41, and who is to say that he did not extend his club career — which is where players make most of their money — by several years because he gave up flying over to the western hemisphere 10 times a year. The reason Friedel was not trashed, when he quit international soccer, is that Kasey Keller was around, and Tim Howard, too. The U.S. would do fine without him.

There is no such replacement for Landon Donovan.

The Galaxy news release led to the inevitable “Landycakes” mockery and attacks on his character.  (Read some of the comments under the Jason Davis piece.)

Prompting sober onlookers to wonder how it can be forgotten that Landon hardly missed a national team match for more than a decade, has scored more goals and made more assists than anyone in U.S. history and has played more games than anyone except Cobi Jones.

He apparently is expected to show up whenever and wherever for the national team, and play for a coach who doesn’t seem to value him, and die on the pitch — or until U.S. “fans” boo him off it.

Those who carp about “well, he does have a contract with the Galaxy and should show up” … wouldn’t it be a reasonable guess that the club is not, in fact, paying him for the time he is absent?

And don’t you prefer to have your athletes play for the love of the game, and not just show up and cash a check? Don’t you want them to have minds of their own, and to know when enough money is enough, and chasing it doesn’t have to rule their lives?

The real takeaway is this: Landon is coming back to the Galaxy. He has not ruled out returning to the national team.

This is the greatest player in U.S. soccer history, and the reaction should be, “Thank God!” But Landon is held to a different standard. He is supposed to run himself ragged for the pleasure of hyper-critical soccer fans. For whom Landon-bashing never goes out of season.