Sixteen years ago, long before he would presumably start in goal for Toronto in Sunday's MLS Cup final against Seattle, Quentin Westberg was on the U.S. team that played in the 2003 Under-17 World Cup.
“I remember almost everything from the youth national teams,” the French-American Westberg told SI.com this week. “They played such a huge part in building my identity. I really cherished that period.”
That U-17 World Cup in Finland marked the debut in a U.S. uniform of a 14-year-old global phenomenon named Freddy Adu. A year after writing Sports Illustrated’s first cover story on LeBron James, who was a high school junior at the time, I was fascinated by the idea that Adu was another LeBron taking off into the stratosphere.