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A Soccer Pro at 14-MLS locks up newest sensation
By John Jeansonne
Staff Writer
November 20, 2003
For his first season as a professional soccer player, Freddy Adu guessed that "my mom will take me to practice sometimes." In some ways, there is no getting around that he's 14 years old.
He will make roughly $500,000 on the six-year contract he signed Tuesday night with Major League Soccer. He doesn't think it will take "too long" before he breaks into the starting lineup for D.C. United, which worked a deal to obtain the league's top 2004 draft choice so that Adu could be close to his Potomac, Md., home.
During Wednesday 's introductory news conference at Madison Square Garden, MLS commissioner Don Garber called Adu's signing "a monumental day in the history of U.S. soccer," and deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis proclaimed Adu to be "the best young player in the world right now."
Adu's agent, Richard Motzkin, said "all the top clubs in the world" had been in pursuit of rights to Adu, although he wouldn't have been eligible to compete for such European dynasties as Manchester United or Inter Milan until he turned 18.
Between the verbal embroidery of so many experts, and the visual evidence of Adu's speed, technical brilliance and general soccer sangfroid readily available in tapes of his performance for the Under-17 U.S. team, the "prodigy" label sticks with surprising ease.
He scored 22 goals for the U-17 side in 2002 and has 29 in 46 games this year. Perhaps he will make the 2004 U.S. Olympic team at 15; his birthday is in June and the Athens Games in August. Maybe he will ascend to the 2006 World Cup roster at 17. "Both unlikely," Gazidis said, "but I'd never say 'never'. with Freddy."
Adu hit all the right notes by thanking everyone from his mother, brother, uncle, first age-group coach, teammates and agents right up through MLS' hierarchy. "You know what? I'm just going to keep playing and have fun," he said. "I'm still a little kid."
Listed at 5-8 and 140, though he appears closer to 5-6, he displays a carefree confidence ("If you're good enough, you're old enough; if you do well, all props to you") and unusual awareness.
Just this week, he had breakfast with Olympic sprint champion Michael Johnson -- both are represented by global sports agency IMG -- and already was digesting some of the advice. "A lot of people," Adu said, "don't like you for who you are, but for what you're doing [as a star athlete]. You've got to be careful, stay humble, be yourself."
He was born in relative poverty in Ghana, more politically stable than its West African neighbors but still with an annual per-capita income of only $1,900. Via an immigration lottery, the family's name literally was picked out of a hat, granted green-card status and came to the United States in 1997.
Adu's father, Maxwell, remains in the D.C. area but no longer lives with the family, which first settled in Maryland with an uncle, the brother of Adu's mother, Emelia. Both of her sons have the first name "Fredua," but "Freddy's" kid brother long since was dubbed "Fro" by the son of Potomac youth soccer coach Arnold Tarzy. "In Ghana," Tarzy said, "they had the kind of freedom that a lot of us had as kids. 'See you, mom,' and they're out the door to play. I think that's part of why Freddy is so mature. When they came here, they had to start from scratch, and their mother wasn't pleased with their neighborhood. She didn't feel it was safe to let the boys out of the house to play. And she was working two 40-hour-a-week jobs. So Freddy and Fro spent a lot of time at my house."
A classmate spotted the older Adu's soccer skill during recess and invited him onto his youth team. He played against Tarzy's team, which is a power in the region. "He must have been 9 the first time I saw him," Tarzy said. "All the other kids were 10 and we had a very good team, but we couldn't come close to stopping him. Seeing his talent just blows your mind. I made it my life's work for the next week to get him onto my team. All I knew was his first name. I found out where he went to school, found his uncle's phone number, tracked him down."
It was Tarzy, Adu said, who saved his soccer career. "In Ghana, soccer is what you play. Barefoot, in the streets. Every day, all the time," he said. "I was probably 21/2 when I started to play" and unlike most Ghanaian boys, he had a real soccer ball, sent from his uncle in America.
"My mom said that when she'd take the ball away, I'd start crying. Then when I came here, I wouldn't see anybody playing in the streets. It was cold, snow everywhere, and people told me that most American kids have other activities; that's why they don't play. So I was hooked on basketball for a little while until this man helped me find a club team."
Within four years, he was a high school all-American (and became a U.S. citizen earlier this year). Before he was 13, the U.S. soccer federation had placed him in its Bradenton, Fla., residency program, which includes an accelerated education tract tailored to the schedules of young players.
Adu will receive his high school diploma there in March, just as the MLS season commences. He will not get a car for graduation.