There's no escaping the reality: Cavan Sullivan is the best American soccer prospect the USMNT has ever seen

16-year-old soccer sensation Cavan Sullivan is expected to make his USMNT debut today. If not today, then at the very least sometime this international window.

The Philadelphia Union wonderkid has been called up to the national team for the first time this fall, and somehow, even at such a young age, it feels like a long time coming.

There's a lot riding on the shoulders of this young kid. To put it plainly, he is considered the future face of the USMNT. That's not just fluff — there's plenty of reason to believe the hype American fans have heard so many times before, and often been let down.

This time it's different. This time it's special. With Cavan Sullivan, there's a player with the world at his feet.

MORE: Cavan Sullivan's talent and swagger led to first USMNT call-up

Cavan Sullivan has always been different

From an early age, Cavan Sullivan was special. Normally, when speaking about young players, that means from around 10, 11, 12 years old they were displaying signs of exceptional talent.

With Cavan, it was when he was a baby. His father Brendan told The Athletic he was kicking a ball shortly after he could walk, and was scoring goals while still learning to talk. He grew up around a soccer family, between Brendan's former professional career, his mother Heike as a U-Penn captain, and his older brother Quinn as a teammate on the Union.

For Philadelphia Union sporting director Jon Scheer, who has been watching, scouting, and working alongside Cavan since the wonderkid was eight years old, his generational ceiling was apparent from the very start.

"I remember watching him at the youth level, where sometimes you feel like you'd be watching the same player over and over," Scheer told The Sporting News. "And this was like within seconds...you didn't have to be a good scout or know the game. Just his intensity, the initiative, the way he communicated, he was good at organizing those around him. He's going at the other team.

"He was talking to the referee, which at that young of an age...I think he might have been been 10 at the time. These aren't thinks you see at this age, just from an emotional and psychosocial standpoint.

"And then what he would do on the ball was certainly special."

It was apparent immediately what he was seeing.

"I hate to say it, but that would be the moment. I knew right there," Scheer says of when it dawned on him he was watching something special, something different. "I remember watching Gio Reyna play the first time I saw him. I remember feeling like he was different than what I had seen. Christian Pulisic, I remember watching when he was with the U-17's in [youth] internationals.

"But I would say Cavan is the most dominant youth player I have seen."

A five-tool player for the USMNT

Scheer has been following Cavan's progress for almost a decade, and has had a significant hand in his development. Joining the Union as the academy's Director of Talent Identification in 2018, Scheer first saw Sullivan playing as an eight-year-old with FC Delco, his youth team, at a regional showcase in North Carolina.

"Just seeing him kind of boss older players around and dominate that young," Scheer recalls. "He's a shouting talent, that was for sure."

As Sullivan joined the Union and continued to develop, Scheer has been right alongside the process. He moved to Director of Scouting at the club, and then Director of Professional Development, where he oversaw not just Sullivan's growth, but that of many young Union players breaking into the first team over the last few seasons.

"It's been amazing to work with him and his family," Scheer says. "He's a special talent, but it's not just on the field. He's built differently, he's a really smart kid, and he's got a lot of emotional intelligence."

Sullivan's exceptional skill level at 16 years old is apparent immediately. What Scheer says is most impressive — and a big reason why the kid is such an exquisite talent — is his brain.

"The more you watch the more you start to appreciate what he does off the ball and how he moves within lines," Scheer said. "Some of the sophistication in terms of how he looked at the game, how he processed shapes and decisions, how he was able to manipulate others around in terms of spacing and all that. Then you're like 'wow, ok, there's a brain behind that.' Sometimes there's players that like, once they get [the ball], now they com alive. Cavan was always trying to think, 'how do I find a way to manipulate when I'm not on the ball to now get on the ball to make soccer actions to help my team win.'"

Scheer was seeing all of this in an eight-year-old kid. Once Sullivan joined the Union academy in 2020, it was on Scheer to build a plan for his development. For a generational talent with an exceptional soccer IQ, the work was almost done for him.

Through it all, Sullivan was playing against older age groups.

"It was easy," Scheer said. "It wasn't like 'okay, now you played up 2 years with Delco, you're going to come play your age with the Union.' He was playing one year up with us when he joined the club, and very soon moved two years up and was playing with the '07's at the time."

Scheer made sure a high priority was not squashing Sullivan's personality, expressive nature, or unique makeup on or off the field. It wasn't about fitting him into a certain box, but instead creating the box that fit him.

"We would talk about how to continue to push Cavan, but for us as a club at the time, we had to make sure that our staff was finding ways to let Cavan be who he is, because at the end of the day, if you try to put those types of players in little boxes and make them robots, that can be really harmful for certain developments long-term."

To Scheer and the Union staff, Sullivan's development was mapped out for him by his own personal nature.

"He's an extremely intelligent kid," Scheer said. "A long-term predictor of success, from my experience, is learning ability and game understanding. And Cavan isn't just a player that's relying just on speed, just on physicality, just on technique, just on mentality. He has a brain to go along with it. Sometimes players have oneo f those, or two, but Cavan has a lot of these qualities. That's why I do think he has a really high ceiling in terms of potential."

In baseball, they would call him a five-tool player — someone with speed, power, contact, defending, and a great arm. In soccer, the skill sets are more nuanced, but the concept is the same. He's got it all.

Cavan Sullivan timeline for Man City transfer

There is also the future of Man City to consider, as their standing within the Premier League in 18 months is not a given following Friday's news of the club being found guilty of 114 charges of financial and other breaches by the Premier League.

In short, if Sullivan arrives in January 2028 and is bounced out on loan, it would not mean City do not have huge plans for him in the future.

The greatest prospect in USMNT history

There's no debating that Cavan Sullivan is the best American soccer prospect in USMNT history — both right now at 16 years old, and also when projecting his ceiling.

It's a claim that USMNT fans get defensive over, because they've both been burned by it in the past, and hear it all the time.

Freddy Adu first came along with D.C. United at 14 years old, and was immediately dubbed "the next Pele." He dazzled in MLS, only to flame out shortly after. His failure to reach the hype has shaped the jaded approach for USMNT fans towards young prospects ever since.

It's also something writers and pundits toss around relentlessly, desperate to capture hearts in the hopes of generating conversation without actually having much substance behind that claim.

To put it plainly, USMNT fans have heard this before. At varying degrees, they heard it with Gio Reyna, they heard it with Konrad de la Fuente, they heard it with Christian Pulisic, they heard it with Gedion Zaeleem, they heard it with Julian Green. Those players had varying degrees of success — Pulisic has blossomed into one of the best USMNT players ever, Reyna is making an impact, and the rest failed to even remotely reach the hype.

Here, with Sullivan, there's more than just talk, there's tangible production. Since the World Cup ended, Cavan Sullivan has played at an MVP level in Major League Soccer. Through 11 MLS games since mid-July, he has scored six goals and assisted eight more, plus one of each contribution more in three Leagues Cup games. His one-goal, one-assist performance against Sporting KC on September 19 gave Sullivan the MLS record for the most assists as a teenager with 12 on the year, and he is one behind Diego Fagundez's record for most goal involvements by a teenager in a single MLS season.

He is getting shots. He is dribbling at a high volume with nearly a 60% success rate. He is creating chances for others. He is getting tons of touches. Every predictive statistical metric you want in a young player is there, but so are truly tangible pieces of a professional's game, like passing. It's all there. He's not just one for the future, he's one for now.

Yet the hype behind Sullivan's talent goes well beyond this short blip of first-team production. Scouts, executives, friends, teammates, opponents, and fans have been gawking at the kid's exceptional talents for years.

When asked if Sullivan is the best young prospect American soccer has ever seen, Scheer took a long, deliberate pause to think over if he wished to make that leap.

"Look, I think I am biased because I work with him and I've seen him. But I do," Scheer concluded. "I do."

Making these evaluations aren't just Scheer's expertise from years working in youth development and talent identification, it's his everyday job.

"With Cavan, if you talk about the different kind of areas of his game — the mentality, balance, technical ability, his competitive mindset — that is the ultimate weapon he has. Yeah, I do think he has the highest ceiling. What Cavan continues to make of that is up to him."

That's what's made Philadelphia's development of Sullivan so successful: they've left everything at Sullivan's feet — the feet of a 16-year-old kid — because he can handle it. He's always been able to handle it.

"There's a lot of things that can go right in this game and in life, and there's things that unfortunately can go wrong," Scheer said. "At the end of the day, I know he's going to keep his head down. He's hungry for more. He's trying to get better. He's not going to come back from U.S. soccer [call-up] and think he's above the Union or take plays off.

"He wants to be the best he can be. Coupled with the natural talent he has and his work ethic, I do. I do think he has the highest ceiling [of any U.S. player ever], personally."