发表于美《新闻周刊》

Freddy Adu: A Strong Kick for American Soccer    

--Only 13, Freddy Adu could become America’s first breakthrough star    


By Mark Starr
NEWSWEEK

There was something of a legend growing around the boy—across the United
States, it seemed anyone interested in youth soccer had heard of a preteen
phenom named Freddy Adu.


EVEN BEFORE THE 12-year-old led his Maryland team to a national youth
championship in 2001, tales of Freddy had intrigued John Ellinger, coach of
America’s Under-17 squad. So he invited the youngster for a weekend tourney
to showcase his talents amid
the older lads. Still, the coach wasn’t remotely prepared for such a
dazzling performance. On one play, running at full speed, the kid fielded a
pass on the outside of his left foot, flicked it up and over his head—and
over the defender—and
corralled the ball without breaking stride. “I couldn’t believe my eyes...
and then he goes and does it again, this time with the other foot,” says
Ellinger. “When I asked him, ‘Do you realize the things you’re doing out
there?’ he shook his
head. All I could think was, ‘Good Lord, son’.”

The kid with the magic feet could be the face of America’s soccer future.
Now 13, he is the youngest member—by two years—of that U-17 team, which
trains year-round in Bradenton, Fla. Adu has been leaving opponents
breathless and coaches speechless
since arriving in this country, at 8, from Ghana. U.S. soccer brass fret
about the pressure of high expectations, but they can’t contain their glee
over the young scoring marvel. He’s blessed with breakneck speed, amazing
acceleration, the field
vision of an NFL quarterback and deceptive strength for a 5-foot-7,
140-pounder. And he possesses that critical ability to keep the ball on his
foot, even under intense pressure, as if it were dangling from a string. “I
see him do things I haven’t
seen the pros do,” says Ellinger.

For his part, Adu says, he tries not “to get caught up in all that stuff. I
just want to go out, play my game and have fun.” Still, he confesses,
flashing the megawatt smile that seldom departs his face, “sometimes I even
amaze myself.” In truth,
he’s amazed to be playing soccer here at all. When he left Ghana—his mother
won an immigration lottery—all his friends warned that they didn’t play his
game, or at least not very well, in America. “They told me it would be so
boring here.”
Instead, Adu says he’s awed by the collection of young talent surrounding
him. “Everyone is so good that I’m not forced to try to do everything on my
own,” says Adu, who, with his new mates, has scored 19 goals in 30 games
against pro, college and
club teams as well as other nations’ youth squads.
        Adu is bursting on the scene at an auspicious time for American
soccer. While this country has been developing solid, if largely prosaic,
teams for years now, only recently has it begun producing attacking players
with the flair that is the
hallmark of the world’s greatest soccer nations. This past summer a pair of
flashy 20-year-olds, Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, helped the United
States to a quarterfinal berth at the World Cup, its best showing since 1930.
Now Adu looms as
potentially America’s first breakout international star—and a future
mainstay of U.S. Olympic and World Cup teams. He is in an accelerated program
to graduate from high school at 15, when he will likely become the youngest
player in Major League
Soccer history.

Adu has more immediate goals, though. In 1999, Donovan and Beasley led the
U-17s to a surprise fourth-place finish in the World Youth Championships, and
Adu thinks the current U-17 edition can do even better this coming summer in
Finland. To compete,
he must first obtain U.S. citizenship, which he expects to do early in the
new year. “I can’t wait to put on this country’s uniform for real,” he
says. “I feel like I’m an American kid now.”
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