Cavan Sullivan made a small but significant stage on the road to the world celebrity of football during the weekend when he scored his first goal in Manchester City colors for the team of under 21 of the Premier League giant.
The 15 -year -old, born in Philadelphia, spends two weeks with the configuration of the youth of City as part of an agreement which will possibly see him go from the Union of Philadelphia to the city system when he is 18 years old. Then, he will return to the first union as a role player for a Philly team who is currently performing in a championship.
Sullivan is the most anticipated talent to play in Major League Soccer since Freddy Adu, 14, made his debut for DC United in March 2004.
But even a superficial look at the introduction of ADU to professional football shows the enormous advantages that Sullivan now has in a modern MLS which includes a youth development infrastructure, ADU and his family could not have dreamed.
Like Adu, Sullivan made his debut in MLS as 14 years, broke ADU’s record for the younger player in the 13 day league.
But even after graduating from the Union Youth Academy to sign a local contract, he passed the vast majority of his 1,897 minutes in the senior club game at the third level Philadelphia Union II. They play in MLS Next Pro, a league launched only four seasons there are the highest level of reserve competition for MLS teams.
All the appearances of 11 mLS of Sullivan, except one, came out of the bench, and they were dispersed during a calendar year, allowing the adolescent to digest each while continuing to refine his profession at the level of the Union II.
The ADU was plunged into 30 appearances in MLS (and 14 departures) during its first season for a DC team which finally won the MLS Cup. And although the team succeeded, it was clear as the season was concerned on the ADU was not quite ready to participate in adult men.
Before becoming a pro, Sullivan played in an academy that spent a decade repairing itself as one of the best talent pipelines in the Western hemisphere.
The Brenden and Paxtre Aaronson field circles and defenders Auston Trusty and Mark McKenzie are among the Union Academy products in Europe. Cavan’s older brother, Quinn Sullivan, should join them as soon as possible.
And despite City’s reputation as an annoyance spending, when Cavan Sullivan crosses the ocean for good, he will be in another club with an exceptional assessment – one that produced current English stars Cole Palmer and Phil Foden, among others.
The ADU could not even be signed at the DC Academy, because MLS was still five years from the creation of its local player mechanism. He was the first global choice of the 2004 draft, taken by DC after the League helped facilitate a business with Dallas so that I could play closer to his family in the suburbs of Maryland.
Perhaps more importantly, no one is looking for Sullivan to save MLS. Lionel Messi’s relationship with the League may not be perfect, but he is always the greatest player living on Earth – and he still plays Miami.
The ADU entered MLS two years after two of its first 12 teams had failed, and when it was not clear if the league survived during the decade. Even if he had proven to be as talented as a young Messi, the expectations imposed on him to catapult a whole league with relevance were unjustly high.
The MLS youth development system is still far from perfect, with too many obstacles to participation and a system of territorial rights that restricts the choice of players and their families. And MLS Next Pro always deals with most of the problems of its parental league in terms of trying to create a competitive environment that competes with Europe.
The support structure under Cavan Sullivan is as good as any American football player. This does not guarantee that Sullivan will become the export of MLS transformational, ADU has not been below. Sometimes young players do not take place in adulthood.
But in 20 years, it is much less likely that we will discuss the place where its development went badly.
