The Yanks are coming

The person I'd least like to be right now? Saddam Hussein. The person I'd most like to be? Freddy Adu.

Freddy is young. He smiles a lot. He's bright enough to have skipped a year at school. He's charismatic. He's level headed. He's cool.

Born in Ghana in 1989, he moved to the U.S. in 1997 and since then he has emerged as the most exciting prospect in world football.

He resides at the IMG camp in Bradenton, Florida where he can develop his skills at the world's leading sporting academy as well as hone media savvy and keep his academics on track.

Freddy has talent like the US military has things that go POW! Newsweek recently reported on a typical move: 'running at full speed, he fielded a pass on the outside of his left foot, flicked it up and over his head and over the defender and corralled the ball without breaking stride. "I couldn't believe my eyes - and then he goes and does it again, this time with the other foot," said [his Under-17 coach] John Ellinger'.

'Sometimes I even amaze myself,' says Freddy.

All this talent, all this star power, but the real reason I want to be Freddy? As of a month ago, Freddy is an American.

The 13-year-old phenom recently helped Team USA's Under 17s to the world Youth Championships to be held this August in Finland. He could well be the player that propels America to genuine international soccer success. If he does that, in addition to all his other estimable attributes, he will be worth about three aircraft carriers before he's thirty. I have a feeling that he might even be able to get himself quite an attractive girlfriend.

Freddy professes a desire to lead the US to a World Cup victory at some point in his career, and although only ten years ago such a notion would have been regarded as absurd, the world's established footballing elite now have good reason to be twitching like a tyrant's bushy upper lip.

In case you haven't noticed, the United States of America is a big, rich, powerful nation that is rather fond of winning. Until recently, however, soccer was one arena of activity where even the hyperpower couldn't make an impression.

Things have changed. Soccer has been established at school level for many years, and not just for girls. If I go for a walk in Riverside Park near my home in New York, the kids, boys and girls, are playing football.

MLS is fighting for attention in a country festooned with sport all year round, but according to all sources the league is getting better. International interest in American players is increasing. America reached the last eight of the last World Cup. Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, who were instrumental in that achievment, are both 20 years old.

Another thing about America: it's very big on coaching. Think about all the international sports where America has a major presence: golf, tennis, track and field. The world's best talent in these sports develop their abilities at American institutions, usually universities.

Strength, athleticism, technique, strategy, every element of one's ability is rigorously calibrated, benchmarked, improved. The competitive environment is tough, so the psychological part of one's make up is also tested and developed.

Ray Hudson, is a Geordie who has been involved with US soccer for many years. According to Freddy, who is sometimes coached by him, Hudson regularly shouts "Come ON, lad" in his general direction. I get the feeling that Adu's subsequent instruction might be a touch more rigorous.

The American mentality believes in the merciless application of science and hard work to genetically inherited talent. In America, the flashy, talented waster is held in low esteem. Tiger Woods is the most gifted golfer ever to play the game. He's also the most technically sound. He's also the fittest. He also works the hardest. He encapsulates the American philosophy of sporting achievment. One thing's for certain, Freddy Adu won't be allowed to squander his talent if America has anything to do with it.

Another thing about America, and this is not to be taken lightly: it's a pretty fine place to live if you're young and gifted. Offered the option of being a boot boy at Goodison Park or a couple of years at IMG's camp in Florida or say, at UCLA, where might the world's young talent want to go? I bow to few in my fondness for the North West of England, but I won't be taking my vacation in Fazackerly this year.

Finally, and crucially, America badly wants to win at football. You may not like it, but you can't deny it, once this country gets an idea in it's head it doesn't rest until it's in everybody else's. It's current idea: seven years' time, Freddy Adu holding aloft the soccer World Cup. I suggest that people start getting used to it.

So let's think about the future: America is filled with determined desire. The entire nation is swimming with brilliant soccer players from all over the world learning a) how to take their games to the highest level and b) how to fill in US citizenship applications. The country is watching the young core of its team get better. This core is augmented by a rising star who is being compared to Ronaldo and Pele, around whom the national manager can build a team. Nike and ESPN have turned him into a global icon. Freddy can handle it. Americans from Maine to California will want to get involved. Money will gush in from all quarters. That never hurts.

It's a virtuous circle if ever there was one.

So by the time of the 2010 World Cup in Africa (and won't that be something?), Adu may well have in a way completed that virtuous circle. Even if the US doesn't win, there is no doubt that an African hyperstar playing for America in a World Cup in Africa would be a beautiful thing and, one would hope, a unifying and celebratory thing.

I don't want to put too much on the poor lad's shoulders, but with the world the way it is presently, maybe trying to think of reasons to be cheerful isn't such totally unnatural.

And that's Freddy: whatever way you look at him, all that boundless energy, talent, intelligence, charm, fun, potential, all that possibility - which ever way you look at it a reason to be cheerful. Particularly, I should imagine, if you're Freddy himself.