Freddy Adu felt a tap on his shoulder. Spinning around, the 14-year-old was greeted by a familiar face grinning back at him. “What is this… what is happening?” a confused Adu asked no one in particular. “Why is Pele here?”
It might sound like a football-mad teenager’s fever dream, but this was Adu’s real life. O Rei was there to meet him.
Adu might be best known for the virtual version of himself that existed on Football Manager during the Noughties, but his story began before he was hoovering up Ballons d’Or on people’s hard drives.
In March 2004, the naturalised American shot to prominence in the United States after standing out at youth level, and became the youngest US athlete for more than a century to turn professional when he signed a deal with DC United aged 14. He not only went straight into the first team, he also became the star attraction at the club, and in Major League Soccer as a whole.
If that wasn’t enough expectation to pile on to adolescent shoulders, American media dubbed Adu ‘the next Pele’ – so naturally the Brazilian legend was drafted in to meet his heir and star opposite him in a skills challenge for a television advert promoting soft drink ‘Sierra Mist’. Adu won the fictional contest.
The teenager was US football’s bright new hope, destined to take the world by storm and lift his country’s reputation on the global stage. Yet fast-forward nearly two decades and the story is winding down
