Now a ‘veteran’ at 19, Adu more comfortable

A pro at 14, he’s still the youngest player on the U.S. national team.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) — Freddy Adu liked the attention. He liked running around soccer fields and trying fancy ball tricks. He liked shooting, he liked scoring and he liked messing around with teammates.

Adu knew some veteran players didn’t appreciate a kid who was trying to have fun — and who was making more money than most of his teammates.

“It was hard,” Adu said in an interview with The Associated Press, “because I felt like the creativity was being coached out of me.”

The creativity is still there. Now older, wiser and starting to play more often with the U.S. national team, the 19-year-old feels more comfortable.

“At times, I wasn’t always welcomed with open arms,” Adu said. “That was definitely the hardest part, was having to deal with a little bit of — quote, unquote — jealousy, from some of the older guys because they had been there, done that, and I was getting a lot of attention.”

Adu figures to be a part of the U.S. team at this summer’s Olympics and could play a role in World Cup qualifying, which resumes with the regional semifinals starting Aug. 20 at Guatemala.

The path has not been easy for him.

At 14, Adu was the youngest player to sign with a Major League Soccer team. He was getting constant attention. Some media outlets dubbed him the next Pele, who would make Americans fall in love with U.S. soccer. Adu’s MLS debut was nationally televised on ABC. His first playing time was national news.

It was overwhelming.

Adu was, admittedly, a carefree kid who just wanted to enjoy the spotlight. He had a tough time dealing with all those off-the-field issues and used a sports psychologist at IMG Sports Academy and Michael Johnson, a retired world-record-holding sprinter, to help him get through.

The hype was there even before the teen signed an MLS contract — Nike gave him an endorsement contract at age 13 said to be worth $1 million. Adu had four goals at the 2003 FIFA Under-17 World Championship, months before signing with D.C. United. He was a celebrity, which he loved, but Adu said some of his teammates mistook youthful exuberance as arrogance.

“I was a confident little kid on the field,” Adu said at practice last week ahead of the U.S. team’s World Cup qualifier at Barbados. “I thought I took chances on the field and people took that the wrong way. They took it as me trying to show off.”

Looking back, Adu, still the youngest player on the U.S. roster, says the experience helped him. And even though the spotlight has dimmed, Adu is happy to be on the new-look U.S. team, which hopes to rebound from its first-round exit of the 2006 World Cup.