What ever happened to Freddy Adu?

It was 20 years ago today, April 3, 2004, that a 14-year-old made American sports history. ("What am I going to do, say no to millions of dollars? While my family's struggling? No.")

Apr 03, 2024

It was 20 years ago today, April 3, 2004, that a boy from Maryland (an immigrant from Ghana who had become an American citizen the year before) made sports history.

This was the day that Freddy Adu, aged just 14, and the youngest person ever to sign a U.S. professional team sports contract, debuted at RFK Stadium in Washington, for D.C. United in Major League Soccer.

How big was the hype about Freddy back then? At the start, MLS touted this extremely talented but also extremely young player as the next Pelé, before he’d played a single minute of pro soccer.

I don't mean that figuratively; they literally recruited the real Pelé to shoot a commercial with 14-year-old Freddy, explicitly making the comparison.

It's funny; I write about many different things. And I'm very grateful for the people who take the time to read what I write in this newsletter.

But, I'm also curious how many readers will be hearing this story for the first time, and how many will know the details as well as I do, or even better.

Regardless, on this anniversary, I think you're in for a ride.

‘I have never seen a player like Freddy before’

The best place to begin this story is probably to back up about 6 and a half years.

That would be November 1997, when the Adu family immigrated to the U.S. after winning the Green Card lottery. They settled in Potomac, Maryland, and when Freddy's parents split up, his mom worked long hours, providing for him and his younger brother.

The boys had culture shock, but they made friends and studied hard.

"An absolute gem of a boy," a teacher said about Freddy. "Very nice, very thoughtful. It's always, 'please and thank you.' He's very well-spoken. He gets excellent grades ... He's very well-liked by everyone in his age group."

Soccer helped. Back home in Ghana, Freddy and his little brother, known as Fro, had played pickup constantly, usually with much older and bigger boys—and even young men.

Now, playing against American kids at 4th grade recess? It was literally child's play.

One dazzled classmate invited Freddy to play with his youth team after seeing him on the playground. He absolutely dominated. A coach who happened to be watching rushed to Freddy's house to get his mother’s signature, and recruit him to his elite-level team.

"I saw him that day and went bonkers," the coach, Arnold Tarzy later recalled. "I couldn't sleep that night. I have never seen a player like Freddy before."

(I’ve included a YouTube video later in this story with some of Freddy’s highlights, so you’ll be able to see the kind of player we’re talking about. They’re mostly from a few years later, so we’ll wait a minute to share it.)

Things moved quickly. Freddy was recruited into the top youth soccer development programs. In 1999—so barely two years arriving in the U.S.—he toured Italy in a tournament against that nation’s top youth clubs. Even as one of the youngest players, Freddy was the MVP and high scorer.

He did it the next year, too—same result. Soon, Inter Milan, a top-flight Italian pro team, tried to recruit him with a six-figure development contract.

His mother demurred. "We need money,” she explained, “but I don't want to rush Freddy. He's just a kid. I will not sell my son.”

Besides, his family had arrived in the United States so recently. If it was important for him to sign, maybe he could play in the fledgling U.S. league?

No, Major League Soccer replied at first. "At some point we’ll look at it again," the MLS deputy commissioner told the writer Grant Wahl, who was writing the first big profile of Freddy, for Sports Illustrated, in 2003. "But 13 is just too young."

So Freddy enrolled in the U.S. Soccer Federation’s residency program at the IMG Academies in Florida. There, he could train with the country's best, and also complete high school on an accelerated schedule.

That summer, he dominated once more, this time with the under-17 U.S. national team at the World Championship in in Finland, scoring 4 goals.

And MLS's hesitation faded fast.

Number 1 Overall

In January 2004, Freddy Adu was picked first overall in the MLS SuperDraft.

Everyone else was much older. Out of the first 10 picks, Freddy was the only player who hadn't played in college. (Chosen 8th that year? Clint Dempsey, who would go on to become one of the greatest U.S. soccer players in history.)

It was more than just the idea of drafting an adolescent. In the early 2000s, MLS was in deep financial trouble, and desperate for a star who could make headlines and attract fans.

So, they did three things.

First, and most sensibly, they worked a deal to send Freddy to D.C. instead of the Dallas team that originally had the first pick. This way, Freddy could at least live at home in Maryland with his mother and brother.
Second, they signed him to a huge contract by the standards of the time: a reported $500,000, plus another $500,000 in marketing deals for his first year. This made Freddy Adu the highest paid player in MLS history at age 14—making multiples of what most of his teammates made—again, before he'd ever played a pro game.
Finally, they hyped the heck out of the young prodigy, most memorably with the Pelé commercial (technically it was an ad for the league’s top sponsor, Sierra Mist soda).

Years later, here's how Freddy described feeling when Pelé arrived:

"I remember saying, 'What is this? ... What is happening? Why is Pelé here?'
They didn't tell me he was shooting the commercial with me. ... It was one of the greatest moments of my life. ...
To me, Pelé is the Michael Jordan of our sport. I will never forget that moment.
I was only 14 at the time. It was so cool, man."

Highest paid player in league history

Once more I interject to surmise that there are probably two kinds of people reading this article.

There are the ones who will think: Wait, this guy was supposed to be the next Pelé? Even if I'm not a big soccer fan, I wonder how I missed him?
And, the ones who think: Right, he signed with MLS ... and then we all know what happened next!

Because what happened next was—well, it's probably what MLS should have expected would happen, as a best-case scenario, when you sign a single ridiculously young player, with no peers, to a club full of grown, professional athletes.

MLS didn't make its salaries public back then, but the MLS players union compiled a complete list, and leaked it to the media.

"Few Getting Rich Playing in M.L.S." was the headline in the New York Times in January 2004. Freddy later acknowledged:

"It wasn't easy for me going in being the highest-paid player in the league and getting all the attention I did as a 14-year-old, and fitting in with guys who feel like they've been there and done that, and are not getting that attention and that money.
There was some problems there, definitely. It was a target on your back all the time as a kid. That stunk."

Seriously, watch the video

Now, we should note that while this was probably crazy in retrospect, and some people certainly criticized the idea at the time, it wasn't so crazy that you couldn't imagine it might pay off.

Adu really was very talented—certainly in comparison to all the other teen-aged American players of his era.

He had flashes of true brilliance. I was living in DC then, and I saw him in person for the first time at RFK later that season, which happened to be when he scored his second MLS goal (and his first at home).

This is probably a good place to embed the YouTube highlight video I mentioned showing some of his moves. He was very good—again, especially considering that at many points in this video, he was literally a boy playing among men.

But no, he wasn't the next Pelé.

Freddy’s D.C. United coach, Peter Nowak, was in a tough spot. He faced immense pressure to play the million-dollar-a-year-star. But while he apparently decided Freddy was a promising player, he also (quite naturally) decided he was not up to starting consistently.

So Freddy often came off the bench, as a substitute. His team won the MLS Cup championship and Freddy scored 5 goals on the year, which was pretty impressive for a kid—but not Pelé-esque.

If there's a theme, it's that in a perfect world, Freddy might well have become a true star for the U.S. national team, and had a big, impressive career in Europe. But it’s not a perfect world.

(By the way, for people who don't follow soccer, the U.S. league, Major League Soccer, has made strides, but it's still considered several steps below the established leagues in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, among others. Imagine Triple-A baseball compared to MLB.)

‘Let's keep it 100’

Freddy later acknowledged that for all the pressures on him, one of the things that hurt his game was his immaturity.

As an early teen, he simply wasn't putting in the extra work. He touched on all of this last year in an interview with U.S. soccer star turned broadcaster Charlie Davis, who had played with him back in the day:

"Look man. Let's keep it 100. I was able to get into places where a teenager wasn't supposed to be getting into. All my friends were older ... all the bars and whatnot, stuff like that.
I was enjoying that rather than focusing on the little things, let's say, getting the rest you need, your diet, getting stretching in, taking care of your body. I didn't do enough of that. ...
When I look back, I wish I had someone that was telling me to do these things. Stay straight. Because ... "

Freddy spent three years at D.C. United, putting in a good performance with again, flashes of brilliance, but not the league's most talented player. At age 17, he was traded to Real Salt Lake, and he captained the U.S. under-20 team at another world championship, scoring 3 goals.

After that, once more, Europe was calling. Freddy made the jump to Benfica, in the Portuguese league, but he struggled for playing time.

Ultimately, he was loaned to other clubs all over Europe: France, Greece, and Turkey, for example; then back to MLS for a stint in Philadelphia, and then Brazil, Serbia, Finland—back to the U.S. again, at a lower level, and finally Sweden.

It was a journeyman’s career, not a superstar’s.

Freddy later reflected that he never developed the patience he would have needed to build a reputation and excel in any one place.

"The one decision I made that I would have done differently ... was leaving Benfica and going on loan to Monaco," Freddy said, explaining that it snowballed into never really having a team to call home. "So that one decision–and I'm not blaming anybody, because I made the decision—I would have done differently."

Everything happens for a reason

I suppose I’m drawn to Freddy’s story now because I was one of those fans back in 2004 and 2005, going to D.C. United games, paying for tickets and ultimately funding the whole MLS experiment.

I'm glad I got to see him, but it feels a bit weird now, as if I was a small part of a national effort to exploit a teenager. It's funny how much more sensitive I am about that kind of thing now that I'm a parent.

Because I'm also not mainly a soccer writer, I tracked down and interviewed some of the top writers who've written about Freddy.

Grant Wahl was the granddaddy; he even produced a multipart podcast about Freddy a few years ago. Sadly Wahl passed away due to a ruptured aortic aneurysm in 2022, while covering the World Cup in Qatar. (May he rest in peace.)

But Ryan Baldi, who wrote about Freddy for The Guardian, was a big help:

"It sounds like you're on the right track. From what I gather it was basically a perfect storm of factors that meant he was doomed from the start by ridiculously high expectations.
MLS was in a rush to find its superstar. This was pre-[David] Beckham, it was a long way pre-[Lionel] Messi. ...
He was never the next Pelé. He was good, a good 14-year-old player among his peers. But he never should have been playing professional football with men."

I started out feeling a bit sorry for Freddy Adu—but I’m glad to say that’s changed. Now, in the end, I’m walking away with nothing but respect.

Truly, in every interview I read, watched, or listened to, Freddy seems quite happy—which is a lot more than you can say for many people. I think the only way you can actually see him as "less than he might have been" is if you're willing to go back in time, 20 years, and blindly accept the insane hype.

By signing his original contract, Freddy vastly improved his family's life circumstances.

"What most people don't know," Freddy once said in an interview, "is that I decided to go pro because my family was real poor. At that point my mom was a single mother, working two jobs, three jobs. What am I going to do, say no to millions of dollars? While my family's struggling? No."

Also, I think of the age Freddy is now—34—and realize that he still has time for a second or third act, or maybe even more.

That’s a great thing about America. We get second acts.

Anyway, I go back to what he told Charlie Davies, who observed to Freddy that he seemed totally at peace.

"Of course!" Freddy replied enthusiastically, adding:

"Look, man. Sometimes having all the talent in the world, it's not enough. ... Guys that aren't as talented as you, if they work their asses off, they're going to surpass you. It happened in my case. ...
I was given a God-given talent. I did the most I could with it. I'm not going to sit here and be like, ‘oh I did everything I wanted to.’ Nope, I didn't. I didn't!
But you know what? Everything happens for a reason."

Understandably by Bill Murphy Jr.

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