America's Pele?

Pele made his sensational international debut as a 17-year-old in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden when he scored six goals in just four games. Last night saw the debut of the future of American soccer, the youngest player ever to represent U.S. soccer in world competition and this 13 year old phenom needed only five minutes to make an impact.

Freddy Adu, someone U.S. soccer has never seen the likes of, set up a goal in the fifth minute and scored on an impressive individual effort in the closing moments as the U.S. under-17 national team defeated Jamaica, 3-0, at the world championship qualifying tournament.

Adu set up Corey Ashe for the game’s opener, as Ashe first-timed Adu’s cross home from six yards out. Adu received the ball on the left side of the penalty area, and beat one defender before getting into the area. Adu did one stepover to beat a defender and got to the endline, where he sent the ball across the face of the goal, and Ashe wasted no time in volleying it home.

Late in the match, Jamaica keeper Kerr Duwayne forced Adu wide of the goal, where he wan’t able to get off a shot. Instead, Freddy turned and doubled back to the center of the penalty area. Slaloming through three Jamaican defenders, he set himself for a shot 12 yards from goal, and hammered the ball past a stunned Kerr.

Just last month, playing in a preseason exhibition against the MSL's Chicago Fire, Adu scored both of the under-17 national team's goals, including the game winner.

An excellent student, Adu skipped seventh grade, so he was a high school freshman this fall and amassed 25 goals and 12 assists in 16 games on varsity, leading them to the state title.

Last year, when he was "only" 12 years old, traditional Italian powerhouse AC Milan offered his family $750,000 to sign him.

So what makes this kid so special? All the prodigious talents you would expect of a 13 year old playing on the international level; breakneck speed, amazing acceleration, miraculous field vision and deceptive strength for a 5-foot-8, 150 pounder. More importantly, he possesses that critical ability to keep the ball on his foot, even under intense pressure, as if it were dangling from a string. He can emerge from a sprint, pull the ball behind him and loft a beautiful 30-foot, left-footed pass directly on a teammate's head. He can dash at full speed with the ball yet it is never far enough ahead for an opponent to steal it.

"I see him do things I haven’t seen the pros do," says U.S. coach John Ellinger.

"He has an unflinching confidence with the ball," marveled Dave Sarachan, the coach of MLS’s Chicago Fire. "Speed kills, and if you give him any room, he’ll break down your defenders."

Lest you think soccer is his only forté, in his first organized basketball game two years ago, a jayvee contest for The Heights School in Potomac, Freddy scored 28 points. On the first golf hole he ever played, a 370-yard par-4, Freddy reached the green in two and two-putted for par. In his first art competition as a fifth-grader, his drawing won the top county prize.

In other words, there ain't much this kid can't do.

So naturally, already, talk turns to the future.

America has only recently begun producing strong attacking players with the flair that is the hallmark of the world’s greatest soccer nations. This past summer a pair of flashy 20-year-olds, Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, helped the United States to a quarterfinal berth at the World Cup, its best showing since 1930.

By the time the next World Cup comes around in 2006, Freddy will be 17 years old, the same age as Pele was when he made his debut. If what he has shown to date is any indication, there might be a day in the future not only when Freddy Adu is the greatest soccer player in the world, but when he has elevated America soccer to one of the best in the world as well.