Fredua Koranteng "Freddy"

Fredua Koranteng "Freddy" Adu was born 2 June 1989 in Tema, Ghana. He is a Ghanaian-American footballer playing as a striker or an attacking midfielder. He currently plays for Portuguese team S.L. Benfica of the Portuguese Liga (BWINLIGA), wearing the number 30.

Adu grew up in the port city of Tema, where he played football. When he was eight, his mother won the Green Card Lottery, and he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C. area, in 2003 he became a U.S. citizen.

Soon after arriving in the United States, he was discovered by a local soccer coach and began playing with boys several years older. By the time young Freddy was just eleven-years-old, he was playing so far and beyond the kids in his own age bracket that he was given the opportunity to play with teens sometimes as much as five or six years older than he. And he still dominated.

Adu attended The Heights School, a private school in Potomac, Maryland, for several years. While playing with the U.S. Olympic Development Program in an under-14 tournament against the youth squads of such traditionally strong Italian teams as Lazio of Rome and Turin’s Juventus, Freddy’s team won the competition and he led the tournament in scoring and was named MVP.

His talent level was so high that one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, Inter Milan of Italy, offered his mother a contract of 750,000 dollars for Freddy to come and develop with their youth academy. She politely turned it down and told them that Freddy would be best served by staying close to home with his family.

Since then, Freddy Adu has continued to progress at the U.S. Soccer Academy in Bradenton, Florida. At the tender age of thirteen, he became the youngest player ever to wear the United States jersey in an international event. Now fourteen-years-old, he is playing with the United States under 17 National Team and creating a buzz around the international soccer community that no American player in history has ever experienced.

At the age of 14, Adu became the youngest American athlete in over 100 years to sign a major league pro contract - in any team sport - when he was chosen by DC United as the number one overall pick in the 2004 MLS Super Draft, and won the MLS Cup title with them that year.

He continues to work hard to improve his game, with the ultimate goal of leading the US to a World Cup title always on his mind.

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This chapter was taken out of the Immigration Bible by Zila Katz and Esq.Dotan Cohen, Adv. Get your copy today

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Tom Wright
Editor in Chief
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