Hello,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the total soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. Joining me today is a man who has spent a lot of time thinking about Freddie Adieu, at least recently, but it sounds like long term a lot of time thinking about Freddie Adieu. It's Grant. Thank you for making your return appearance to the show.

Hey, how are you, Taylor?

I'm doing well.

I'm excited to talk about Freddie Adieu, man.

Awesome.

It's a topic that, like, I feel like everybody in U.S. soccer knows at least something about.

I think that's a, I think I saw a couple different people say on Twitter in response to your

first episode, which is now out, that like, oh, my, like, my, my partner knows who Freddie Adieu is, and they don't know anything about soccer. I think my wife knows, like, oh, yeah, Freddy Adieu. Wasn't he in, like, a soda commercial or something? Like, it's, it seems to be a pretty popular thing. But I don't know if anybody's really been able to kind of delve into his story and what happened and everything that's gone into it. And now you have.

So I wanted to talk a bit about American Prodigy. I guess I wanted to let you talk about it as

opposed to me just describing what it is. I don't want to go full Chris Farley show here.

But I wanted to ask first, like what was the motivator for you? Why did you decide this is a podcast

you wanted to do?

I mean, I was always hoping there would be a 30 for 30 on the Freddie Adieu story.

That would be good. And there wasn't. And I now know a little more about why, in part because Freddie turned them down. But like, this is one of the biggest stories in the history of American soccer, and Freddie Adieu transcended soccer.

It's kind of crazy, like you say.

I still think Freddie is probably among the 10 most recognizable names in soccer to Americans, like ordinary Americans.

And he hasn't played in a first division since the Philadelphia Union several years ago.

So that gives you an idea of how much he broke through the clutter in 2003 and 2004 when he

was a 14-year-old playing an MLS and making his debut as a rookie.

So I figured if 30 for 30 wasn't going to do an episode or a series on Freddie a do, I might as well do it.

And I had this dinner in Manchester, England back in 2016, with Aleko Escondarian, who had been

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