Cavan Sullivan, at 14 years and 293 days old, stepped onto the Major League Soccer field on Wednesday night and, in the 85th minute of the Philadelphia Union’s game against New England, made all kinds of history.
He became the youngest player to appear in an MLS game, breaking a record held by Freddy Adu (14 years, 306 days) for over two decades.
Sullivan is also the youngest boy to appear in any major US sports league.
And he is younger than anyone who has played in Europe’s big five football 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, aged 18.
The hype, naturally, raised uncomfortable questions – about our cultural obsession with prodigies; about the usefulness of taking a child to a professional at the age of 14; and so on – especially in the context of the man whose record Sullivan broke. Adu, of course, fell short of monstrous expectations piled on their innocent shoulders.
Perhaps the most relevant question, however, concerns the league Sullivan is entering.
MLS was ill-prepared to accommodate Freddy; Are you ready to welcome Cavan and lead him to stardom?
Many in and around the league believe the answer is yes, because its infrastructure and resources have grown tremendously.
“It’s exponentially different than it was 20 years ago,” Alecko Eskandarian, MLS vice president of player relations and 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 lifted his number 11 and Adu’s number 9. Eskandarian was the DC United star who Adu replaced on his professional debut. He remembers 14-year-old Freddy’s skill and confidence very fondly.
He also recalls that “Freddy was thrown into a room of adults” as the highest-paid player in MLS before he even kicked a ball professionally.
“It was weird, for sure,” Eskandarian said.
The league’s promotion of Adu as a “messiah” who would lead American football to untold prosperity and prominence, as “the biggest signing in league history,” as Commissioner Don Garber saidit only heightened the embarrassment – and the burden on the slender shoulders of a 14-year-old.
This, Eskandarian said, is one of several areas where “the league has evolved a lot. That is not the case in 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 no as well as several teammates.
He was sensationalist, certainly. Even the Union’s own website described it as a “prodigy”. MLS promoted from him potential debuts with a quote from his coach, Jim Curtin: “He’s a generational talent.” Cameras likely followed him from the passenger seat of his brother’s car to the entrance of Subaru Park on Wednesday. They later found him on the bench and watched his second-half walk along the sideline to warm up.
But Sullivan isn’t the stranger Adu once was. It is, instead, the extreme continuation of a trend. He went through a union academy that is widely considered one of the best in the country, a academy that produced dozens of other professionalsmany of whom also signed contracts when they were teenagers.
One of many is Cavan’s older brother Quinn, who turned professional at 16, and scored a bicycle kick in his first MLS match at age 17, and … scored a goal on Wednesday, less than 90 seconds before Cavan entered the game.
Also sitting alongside Cavan on the Union 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 made their debuts since 2020; the 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, many MLS clubs have built robust academies, which have a multifaceted impact on young players. They are more educated; they have a more direct line to (and contact with) the first teams; they have support from psychologists, nutritionists and other specialists; and there is now a further gradation of development, a ladder with several smaller steps instead of a few gigantic ones.
Adu has served on U.S. youth teams and the Olympic Development Program; but there was no intermediate step between them and the MLS. He had to take the leap.
The Union, on the other hand, has a youth team in all age groups, from U9 to U17. From there, players can move on 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 professional contract. And he almost immediately started creating goals.
“There were a lot more tests on Cavan’s path, and a lot more pressure tests, to make sure he was ready for this jump,” Eskandarian, who followed Sullivan for four years before helping the league, the Union and Sullivan’s camp with the contract, he said.
“And you try to do it in doses, try not to rush a child that age. But with Cavan, it seems like whatever test he was given, he excelled and wanted more.”
Curtin, in announcing Cavan’s call-up on Tuesday, emphasized that the Philadelphia native would be in the starting lineup “because he deserved it.” He accomplished this with “his performances in the Union II games and the goals he scored,” Curtin said.
Not that Adu didn’t take advantage of the opportunity, of course. But Cavan has proven himself at more levels, in front of more scouts, each with more experience and tools at his disposal.
The vast majority confirmed the widespread opinion that its ceiling is very high. Some believe he is one of the best 14 year olds in all of football.
Of course, there’s still one caveat: he’s 14 years old. “A lot of things can happen that can make or break a player’s career,” Eskandarian said. “But I think we now have more resources than ever before to make sure we are taking the necessary steps to try to put the player in the best possible position to be successful.”
