Nuke Soccer - Adu-lation

Article Courtesy of: Scott M. Reid, The Orange County Register

Adu-lation: At 14, Freddy Adu will be U.S. soccer's No. 1 star

He might be the only budding superstar in American sports who takes out more trash than he talks.

After spending the past two years in Florida, Freddy Adu has moved back in with his mother and 12-year-old brother in suburban Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. The 14-year-old is expected to make his bed, keep his room clean and do household chores. He can have friends over for a game of pool or PlayStation in the basement rec room, as long as they're gone by Emelia Adu's midnight curfew.

Not that Freddy seems to mind his mother's rules.

"I can't wait to pick up on the life that I gave up two years ago," Adu said.

His naivete reveals something the soccer field rarely does: He's still just a boy.

For perhaps the most famous 14-year-old in the country, if not the world, resuming a normal boyhood might be as difficult as fulfilling the mission that brought him back home: putting the major into Major League Soccer.

A month before he receives his high school diploma, the boy his friends call "Doogie Howser" will become the youngest player on a U.S. pro team since the 1870s when he makes his regular-season debut for D.C. United against San Jose on Saturday in a nationally televised match.

It is American soccer's most talked-about debut since Pele first stepped on a pitch for the New York Cosmos in 1975. For the Ghana-born Adu, the expectations are as high as they were for Pele nearly 30 years ago.

"I'm not here to be the savior of American soccer," Adu said in an interview last week.

The U.S. game's powers that be have other ideas. Ever since MLS edged out Manchester United, the world's most famous sports franchise, to sign him last November, their marketing campaign has basically been Much Adu About Freddy.

In this dazzling teenager, MLS is convinced it finally has found its first crossover hit. A player America can get to know on a first-name basis, raising the league's attendance and TV numbers in the process. A cross between LeBron and Mia.

"Except I'm not making $90 million," Adu said, referring to basketball's LeBron James. He is making a MLS-high $500,000 per season.

"We believe that we will be able to achieve enormous things with Freddy," MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis said.

Already Adu has taken MLS places it rarely has been. This month he has been featured on "60 Minutes" and in Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated. He has a $1 million endorsement deal with Nike.

Recently, he shot a commercial with Pele for Pepsi's Sierra Mist. In an earlier media blitz of New York, Adu appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman," sat down with Katie and Matt on "Today" and hosted MTV's "Total Request Live."

"We've never had this kind of attention in the non-sports press," gushed MLS commissioner Don Garber.

Those who have seen Adu play insist he is worth the hype. Pele compared him to Mozart.

Former D.C. United coach Ray Hudson has billed Adu as soccer's Wayne Gretzky, describing his signing as an "absolutely gargantuan coup" for MLS.

"Freddy is a very special player," Gazidis said. "He's the best young player in the world right now, not just the U.S."

For the most part, Adu has tuned out the buzz.

"When I'm out there on the field, I'm not thinking about all the stuff people say about me," he said.

He started playing barefoot in the dusty streets of Tema on Ghana's Atlantic coast. His family moved to Maryland in 1997 after winning a State Department green-card lottery. Shortly after their arrival, Adu was spotted playing by a local club coach.

Internazionale of Milan tried to sign Adu at age 10 after watching him tear up an Under-14 tournament in Italy. Inter offered $750,000. Emelia Adu turned it down. She did agree to let Freddy move into U.S. Soccer's residency program at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., two years later. Between training sessions, Adu went to class and worked at a child-care center.

He was the star of last summer's World Under-17 championships in Finland. He scored a hat trick against South Korea in the U.S. tournament opener. Three days later he scored the winning goal against Sierra Leone. By then European powers Chelsea and PSV Eindhoven, among others, had joined Manchester United in pursuit of the boy wonder.

In November, Emelia decided, "It was best for Freddy to stay in America and sign with MLS," and Adu signed a four-year deal. In January he was drafted by D.C. United. This week he moved into the new five-bedroom house he bought his mother and brother.

Adu has world-class speed and quickness and is a magician with the ball. But there remain questions as to how he will hold up over a seven-month season. D.C. United has limited media access to him. Protecting his 5-foot-7, 148-pound frame on the field is another story.

"There's a bet going around in our locker room to see who kicks him first (Saturday) - I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" said San Jose forward Landon Donovan, the MLS MVP last season. "There'll be a point this season when it will get to him a little bit in one fashion or another, but he's confident, he knows what he's good at and he has the people around him to help him. He'll be fine."

"Freddy is going to play, and he is going to show what he can do on the field and everyone is going to respect the way he plays," D.C. United first-year coach Peter Nowak said. "About all the other stuff, he's worth what he gets right now. As I said before, the field is going to verify everything."

The MLS is betting Nowak is right. Yet while there is a concern that MLS is gambling with its future by tying so much of its marketing to a 14-year-old, others wonder whether Adu couldn't end up being too good for MLS' own good.

"The key is, can they keep him?" USC business professor David Carter said.

No player with world-class potential similar to Adu's, Carter continued, "aspires to play in MLS. The league runs the risk of promoting (Adu), developing him, branding him and them having him leave. That's a real risk. They may hang their hat on him, and when all is said and done he might not hang his hat on them."

For the time being Adu is just happy to be headed back home. If he's feeling any heat, he's not showing it.

"Everything else will take care of itself," he said. "If I keep playing and keep getting better and keep doing what I need to do to help my team win, that stuff will take care of itself."

Almost everything. In the closing days of D.C. United's preseason, Adu, at least 15 months from getting his driver's license, realized he didn't have a way to get to practice once the team once the team returned to Washington.