According to the story, he's 5'7". He's hardly a giant amongst men (or boys). Frankly, I find all of this questioning of his age to be reprehensible. There is no proof that Freddy or his family are misrepresenting who he is, so why can't people take his stated age at face value? Maybe he's just that good. To flat out accuse the kid or his family of lying or misrepresentation without any proof is just disgusting. Cut him some slack.
Now that is a darn good idea!!! There's nothing that gets a politician to march double time like a little fan mail from the electorate... Hmmm...a thought...are either of Maryland's senators up for election this year? Can you say "campaign issue"???
As I stated before loads of boys that age from all over the world are bought to big teams if they show any talent, it wouldnt matter if he was american or icelandic,they want the player,african youngsters are especially common in european youth teams, and i believe he is originally from ghana.
For those of us who don't live in a binary or Manichean world, it's possible to have some questions about his age without calling anyone a liar.
Patetic recreational mentality What a patetic recreational mentality! How is posible that soccer people could have this tipe coments about a 14 years old turning pro, I have seen many parents very happy about the posibility of their brats PLAYING A PRO SPORT AT THIS EARLY AGE, this phenomena is commning all over the nation and many people are very exicted, Landon Donovan, Beasley Bros have open a door please lets keep it open
Freddie's Age Did you know that there are over 100 players in the major and minor baseball leagues that have lied about their ages? And that virtually every one of them is from a developing country? This was documented in a Chicago Tribune article later this year. Look, there is ENORMOUS financial incentive for young athletes to pretend to be younger than they are. Hard to do when coming from a country that keeps meticulous records, not so difficult when coming from developing countries. Therefore, it happens routinely in that situation. If your warning bells aren't ringing when hearing a story of a unusually large (yes, 5' 7", 135 lbs. is quite big for a 12 year old kid, which is how old Freddie was listed when those measurements came out), fast, superstud athlete from Ghana who is supposedly a better soccer than anybody within 4 years of his age, then you had better not answer your doorbell the next time the Fuller Brush man comes calling. You'll buy too many brushes for your own good. I really don't understand why so many people swallow this stuff without suspicion. Every year, Mexico comes to the Dallas Cup and whips the top U.S. youth soccer clubs at every age group. Doesn't this strike you as strange? Do you see Mexico's grown-ups routinely beating the U.S. National team? So what, they have great 14 year olds, but not so great at 21? Yeah, maybe. But we're also talking about a country that has been documented as lying about the ages of one of its national youth teams, and that has sent several baseball players to the U.S. who have since admitted fabricating their ages. So there is an alternate theory to explore besides the Paul Gardner theory of "the white man ain't good." Trust but verify, I say.
Re: Freddie's Age That's especially strange when you think about how many Mexies and how many Yanks are playing with pros at age 16, 17, 18, 19.
Re: Freddie's Age The 5'7" isn't too strange, but for him to weigh 135 and be (presumably) lean is really, really strange. I didn't know he weighed that much. I've turned from questioning to skeptical. He really clocked in at a buck 35??? At age 12??? Wow. I remember playing pee wee gridiron. The typical 12 year old played what we called junior league, which had a 100 lb weight limit. A small number of kids played the next class up, IIRC up to 125 pounds. But to have a soccer build, and go 10 pounds beyond that?!?!
Re: Freddie's Age At the moment Baseball America has the number at 300. However this seems to be mainly a Dominican epidemic. Other countries have a few players on the list, but the D.R. is the big offender. Here's the list: http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/features/agechart.html Strangely there are two separate classes of wrong ages: players who claim to be younger than they are to be more attractive to scouts, and players who claim to be older than they are in order to sign early (you must be 16 in order to sign with a club).
Re: Re: Freddie's Age According to the article, he's 13 now, not 12. Some kids grow very quickly at that age, and kids in general are bigger than they were 20 or 30 years ago. In any case, I don't think there is much cause to worry about his age. Even if there weren't the articles from last year that made it clear that his mother has absololutely zero interest in rushing his career. If there was anybody in his life who was primarily interested in pretending he was younger than he is, then he wouldn't be playing on a team with a maximum age 3 or 4 years beyond his stated age.
20 years ago, at 14... I was 6'0" and weighed 165. But then I only grew 2" after that. My little brother was 5'3" and 115 lbs at 15... and ended up 6'0 and 170. Ya just never know. Give the kid the benefit of the doubt.
5'7" and 135 is a pretty heavy build for such a young kid. I graduated high school at 5'10" and 140. Of course, since then I've packed on some meat.
Agreed. My curiousity led me to find a growth chart developed by the National Center for Health Statistics. It shows, that at age 13, Freddy is in the high 90's percentile in both height and weight. If he were way outside the range, it would certainly deserve scrutiny, but it's not. Have a look for yourself... As I see it, he's in the 95th percentile for height, and about the 92nd percentile for weight. Looking at those numbers, and realizing that 5-10% of 13 year olds are just as big as he is, it should be clear that this is not all that unbelievable. As for dogbyte, I think he's lying about his age. That's just impossible...
Re: Re: Re: Freddie's Age According to JohnR's post, he was that size at age 12. I'm basing my posts on JohnR's post. Haus...as I'm reading that chart, it's just a straight, average weight. I'll bet anything that Freddy was 99th %ile for lean 12 year olds, if I'm reading that chart correctly. When I was a kid, I played on a juggernaut little league baseball team. Our worst season, we made the city quarterfinals, so I saw the best (which usually meant biggest) kids in the city. OK, that was a long, looong time ago, but I don't think there were any 135 pound kids. In fact, when I was 10, we won the city championship with a kid who was a star, in large part, because he'd begun to fill out. He didn't really have a boy's physique. He had a birthday just after the deadline, so he was also with a week or two of being the oldest little leaguer in the city. Man, I wish I knew how much he weighed. He might have gone 135. But he was also the heaviest lean kid I saw in my 4 years.
Even if he's a danny almonte it sounds like he's one heckuva player. It's fun to get excited about such prospects.
I'd have to agree. While I think there is some cause for suspicion if he just turned 12 and was 5'7" and 135 lbs, I am certainly in no position to make that kind of assessment because I just don't know the facts. If he is playing against older players and is making them look like "dog crap" on the field and drawing comparisons to highly esteemed players, what difference does it make whether he's 13 or 16? Yes, yes, I know - development ... blah blah blah. Bottom line is, apparently he's a very good player, and if he can contribute to the success of the senior national team, who cares how old he really is right now (other than his fellow 13 year olds who can't touch him)? Perhaps we're following a core member of Project 2010? Hope he's not reading this. No pressure Freddy. No pressure Freddy.
LOL. The most interesting thing I got from the article is his preference to play as an attacking midfielder, behind the two strikers. This seems to be our hardest position to fill, because it demands great natural skills and technique- great ball control, insticts, distribution, pace and a propensity to score around the goal. If im not mistaken, we have more than a few talented strikers, defenders and wing players in U17 and U21, but there is a dearth of AMF's. Man, I hope this kid is for real. As for his age, Lebron James has been touted for the NBA since he was 13 years old as well. He was on the cover of SI at 15. Who cares how old he is - if he can hack it, then laet him play.
Did I say it wasn't possible? If you aren't accusing him of lying, it doesn't apply to you. Stop being so touchy, superdave.
I was speaking with a 16 year old teammate of Freddy's about 2 weeks ago. Take this for what it is worth: the teammate stated that Freddy was born in 1986, although he has a birth certificate that states he was born in 1989.
Re: Freddie's Age Yes, but that has nothing to do with this case. Then why didn't his family take Inter's money? Don't worry about me, man. I hate salesmen almost as much as I hate people who want to drag some 13 year old kid's name through the mud. I'm not one of the sheep that's on the "If he's from Ghana, he's probably lying" bandwagon. Suspicion is healthy to a degree. So is logic. I know the Ghanian education system isn't noted as the world's most advanced, but c'mon. If you were a Ghanian parent with a soccer prodigy son, and you were going to go through the trouble of lying about his age to secure him a fat contract, wouldn't you take him to England or Italy instead of the United States? The parents of Dominican baseball players that lie don't take their kids to Holland or Spain. They take them where the clubs are. US youth teams have been doing far better in international tournaments over the last 15 or so years than their older counterparts, beating nations that we regularly lose to on the senior level. Were we lying too? There isn't a direct correlation between success at those age levels and senior international success. Some kids develop later than others, some kids flame out. I think I remember reading somewhere that the majority of U-17 internationals worldwide never even make their nation's senior international squad. Who's bringing race into this? That's all I'm saying. Have a heathy amount of suspicion, but don't assume he's lying just because of where he's from. Innocent 'til proven guilty.
Could be. I know sometimes in developing countries, birth certificates aren't issued until many years after a child is born, if at all. If a 16 year old teammate can find out Freddy's true age, then it shouldn't be too hard US Soccer or a reporter to do likewise. It wouldn't be in the USSF's best interests to lie about it.
Re: Re: Freddie's Age This is a really, really good point. Remember, they've been here for 4+ years. It's likely that the mom didn't know/think she had a wunderkid on her hands, and thus had no incentive to lie about his age. Well, little incentive. She may have felt shaving a year off his age would get him into a younger grade in school and therefore have more time to catch up to his grade level. (What "colonial" language do they speak in Ghana? English or French?) Who knows. In any event, this is NOT the same thing as a 17 year old Dominican baseball player saying he's 15. The Adus "locked in" Freddy's age 4 years ago. It's hard to figure out what incentive there would have been to "lie" by 3 years in a family that turned down Inter's offer. Those two things don't really go together. As for what difference 3 years makes...if he's the best kid at Bradenton, and he's 16 years old, he could be the next Landon Donovan. Which is pretty great. If he's the best kid at Bradenton and he's 13, he could be the next Maradona. Or a Maradona who doesn't pi** away half his career through drugs and general insanity. To put it another way, if Freddy is really this good, and he's only 13, he has a legitimate chance to be the greatest player ever. The Altamonte analogy was kind of silly in this thread. As a 12 year old, he was a once-in-a-lifetime phenom. As a 14 year old, he's very very good. It actually proves the point that a couple of years makes a tremendous difference in judging an athlete. I'm really surprised people are underestimating the impact of 2 or 3 years. I think of little league baseball, because that's what I played most seriously. For those of you who played soccer, think of youth soccer. An all-star team from my city, Raleigh, of 12 year olds, couldn't beat even the worst teams at the next level, which in Raleigh was 13-14. Remember the kid I mentioned that was on my Little League team, the one who dominated? (He had several one-hitter and/or 17 strikeout performances that year.) The next season, in junior league (13-14), he was just another good player. And the year after that, he led his team to the city championship. If you think back to your youth soccer days, do you think the "elite" 13 year old team could beat a good 16 year old regular league team? I agree with the sentiment of, let the kid be. But for the posters who are saying it doesn't matter (or matter much) if he's 16 instead of 13, he still could be great, that's just not right. The difference between him being 16 instead of 13 is the difference between a potential Landon and a potential Pele or Maradona. I guess I'm saying, I'm not chastising the kid or his mom. I'm just saying we should hold off on making this kid a potential world superstar until there's a bit more clarity on his age. Anyone interested in my rampant speculation, here goes: I personally would be pretty surprised if the "true story" surfaced, and his age was overstated by 3 years. That's a pretty big hairball there. But I would not be at all surprised if his age was off a year, even two. It comes back to, you've got a kid who is freakin' HUGE for his age (135 lean pounds at age 12???), yet has "grown" into his body enough to have the requisite coordination to be a great soccer player. Wow.
superdave: I totally agree with your post above. Also, I want to clarify the reason why I quoted your post in response to people who accuse Freddy of lying. The reason I quoted you is because you nicely summed up the reasons that people cite for doubting his age. I wasn't accusing you of accusing him. It was more of a compliment on your ability to make clear and concise posts, that's all.
Then, of course, there was the writer from the DC paper who calimed that Freddy was really the age he claims to be. But, I fear, that link has gone the way of the crash. I did find this, though: http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/01/Bob0831.htm Bob Levey (Washington Post): "Then, a month ago, my son's soccer team, the Potomac Cougars, won the under-14 national championship. Neither my Visa balance nor my heart will ever recover. Freddy Adu, the boy from Ghana you mention, was (and is) the star of the team. But please park forever any notion that he is over age. He could never have played for the Cougars if he had not presented a birth certificate, and he did."