http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-122904c.html
Much Adu about soccer superkid
Freddy Adu is like just about any other 14-year-old boy whose mother drives him to soccer practice. He likes to play video games and trash-talk with his friends.
Starting in March, however, Emelia Adu will have to drive her precocious son not to youth soccer practice but to training sessions for a pro team: D.C. United.
Freddy might not have a driver's license but he has a license to score goals against players more than twice his age after announcing yesterday that he'd signed a six-year deal with Major League Soccer. It could be worth as much as $500,000 a year in a league in which many rookies get the $24,000 minimum.
Adu will become the youngest member of a major-league team since 14-year-old Fred Chapman played baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1887.
Soccer officials hope Adu will spark soccer in mainstream America. MLS commissioner Don Garber called yesterday "the most momentous day" in U.S. soccer history.
"He is a very, very special player," said assistant commissioner Ivan Gazidis. "He is the best young player in the world. The sky is the limit."
Several big-time European clubs were interested in the Potomac, Md., resident, including Manchester United. But Adu wanted to stay home.
When he was introduced at the Garden, Adu immediately thanked his mom, who worked two jobs so he and his brother would have a decent life after emigrating from Ghana in 1997. He gave his mom the silver pen he used to sign the contract before heading off for a taping of "The Late Show with David Letterman."
"She's done what she's done to raise me right as a kid," Adu said. "We've been through some tough times."
Superlatives apparently have not gone to his head. "When I'm out there on the field, I'm not thinking about this stuff people are saying about me," he said.
Adu has been compared with Pele, one of his heroes growing up in Tema, Ghana. "People say I look like him," Adu said. "I don't think so."
He got advice from Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson: "Stay humble, be myself and never lose my smile."
At 5-7 and 140 pounds, Adu will once again be a boy playing among men. During the summer he starred at the under-17 world championships, connecting for a hat trick against South Korea.
"His foot skills are remarkable in that he can do all this with the ball stuck to his foot," said Arnold Tarzy, his former youth coach. "His speed without the ball is the same as his speed with the ball. These things are all unheard of."
Adu is ready for the big time and is taking accelerated courses to finish high school by March in Bradenton, Fla., where the U-17 team trains at residency camp, so he can play with United.
"I'm just going to go out there and play," said Adu, who was named yesterday as a late replacement on the U.S. under-20 team, pending FIFA approval. "I adjust to things pretty quickly."