Cavan Sullivan, at 14 years and 293 days old, stepped onto a Major League Soccer field Wednesday night and, in the 85th minute of the Philadelphia Union’s match against New England, made all sorts of history.
He became the youngest player to ever appear in an MLS game, breaking a record famously held by Freddy Adu (14 years, 306 days) for more than two decades.
Sullivan is also the youngest kid to ever appear in any major U.S. team sports league.
And he is younger than everyone who has ever played in the Big Five European soccer leagues — England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1.
He is a precocious talent, an audacious attacking midfielder, an internationally-coveted prospect who has already agreed to join Manchester City when he legally can, at age 18. He attracted hype even as a pre-teen.
The hype, naturally, has raised uncomfortable questions — about our cultural obsession with prodigies; about the utility of pushing a kid to the pros at age 14; and so on — especially in the context of the man whose record Sullivan broke. Adu, of course, fell short of the monstrous expectations heaped upon his innocent shoulders.
Perhaps the most relevant question, though, pertains to the league Sullivan is stepping into.
MLS was ill-prepared to accommodate Freddy; is it ready to welcome Cavan, and usher him along toward superstardom?
Many in and around the league believe the answer is yes, because its infrastructure and resources have grown tremendously.
“It’s exponentially different from what it was 20 years ago,” Alecko Eskandarian, MLS’ vice president of player relations and player development, told Yahoo Sports.
‘The league has evolved a lot’
Eskandarian would know. He was 21 years old on April 3, 2004, when a fourth official held up his No. 11 and Adu’s No. 9. Eskandarian was the D.C. United star whom Adu replaced on his pro debut. He remembers 14-year-old Freddy’s skill and confidence quite fondly.
He also remembers that “Freddy got thrown into a room with adults,” as the highest-paid player in MLS before he’d even kicked a ball professionally.
“It was awkward, for sure,” Eskandarian said.
The league’s promotion of Adu, as a “messiah” who’d lift American soccer to untold prosperity and prominence, as “the biggest signing in the history of the league,” as commissioner Don Garber said, only accentuated the awkwardness — and the burden on a slender 14-year-old’s shoulders.
This, Eskandarian said, is one of several areas in which “the league has evolved a lot. That is not the case with Cavan. And he won’t have to deal with those pressures.”
He will be paid, well — his contract is reportedly the richest “homegrown player” contract in MLS history — but not as well as several teammates.
He has been hyped, certainly. Even the Union’s own website described him as a “wunderkind.” MLS promoted his potential debut with a quote from his coach, Jim Curtin: “He’s a generational talent.” Cameras followed him from, presumably, the passenger seat of his brother’s car to the entrance of Subaru Park on Wednesday. They later found him on the bench, and tracked his second-half walk down the sideline to warm up.
But Sullivan is not the outlier Adu once was. He is, instead, the extreme continuation of a trend. He came through a Union academy that is widely regarded as one of the best in the country, an academy that has produced dozens of other pros, many of whom also signed contracts as teens.
One of the many is Cavan’s older brother, Quinn, who went pro at 16, and scored a bicycle kick in his first MLS start at 17, and … scored a banger Wednesday less than 90 seconds before Cavan entered the game.
Also seated next to Cavan on the Union’s bench were 17-year-old midfielder Christopher Olney and 18-year-old goalkeeper Andrew Rick.
Also making his debut in the same game was 16-year-old New England defender Peyton Miller.
More broadly, of the 10 youngest players in MLS history, eight have debuted since 2020; a ninth was Alphonso Davies (2016), who now plays for Bayern Munich. The 10th was Adu (2004).
Cavan Sullivan’s path compared to Freddy Adu’s
Over the past decade-plus, many MLS clubs have built out robust academies, which have a multi-faceted impact on young players. They are better schooled; they have a more direct line to (and contact with) first teams; they have support psychologists, nutritionists, other specialists; and there is now more of a developmental gradation, a ladder with several smaller steps rather than a few gigantic steps.
Adu had starred with U.S. youth teams and within the Olympic Development Program; but there was no intermediate step between those and MLS. He had to make the leap.
The Union, on the other hand, have a youth team at every age group from U-9 through U-17. From there, players can go to Union II, the club’s second team, which competes in MLS Next Pro, a reserve league. That’s where Cavan went first in May after signing his pro contract. And he almost immediately started creating goals.
“There have been a lot more tests thrown Cavan’s way, and a lot more pressure-testing, to make sure he was ready for this jump,” Eskandarian, who tracked Sullivan for four years before assisting the league, Union and Sullivan’s camp with the contract, said.
“And you try to do it in doses, you try not to rush a kid that age. But with Cavan, it seems like whatever test was thrown his way, he excelled, and wanted more.”
Curtin, in announcing Cavan’s call-up Tuesday, stressed that the Philadelphia native would be with the first team “because he’s earned it.” He has earned it with “his performances in the Union II games and the goals that he scored,” Curtin said.
Not that Adu didn’t earn his opportunity, of course. But Cavan has proven himself at more levels, in front of more scouts, each with more expertise and tools at his or her disposal.
The vast majority have confirmed the widely-held opinion that his ceiling is sky-high. Some believe he’s one of the best 14-year-olds in all of soccer.
Of course, there is still a caveat: He is 14. “There’s a lot that can happen that can either elevate or curtail a player’s career,” Eskandarian said. “But I think we have more resources now than ever to ensure that we are taking the necessary steps to try to put the player in as good a position as possible to be successful.”
