It was only Defence Force FC, the champions of the Trinidad and Tobago Premier Football League, but for Manchester City-bound Cavan Sullivan it still marked a big milestone.
Two goals in a 7-0 home win for Philadelphia Union, Sullivan’s current club, were the first in senior football for a 16-year-old attempting to live up to his billing as one of the world’s best young talents.
It says much about the hype surrounding him that the attacking midfielder already has a clutch of lucrative endorsement deals, including a tie-up with Adidas that has seen him collaborate with his idol Lionel Messi.
Sullivan for Sullivan
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 6, 2025
15-year-old Cavan Sullivan subs on for brother Quinn. pic.twitter.com/7P2U3Y13KS
His progress has been tracked on an Apple TV mini-series and he is the youngest debutant in the history of the MLS.
But with the clock ticking down on his move to the Premier League at the end of 2027, this probably needs to be a breakthrough year if he is to meet those sky high expectations.
“He’s absolutely got the talent,” says Jonathan Tannenwald, The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s football writer.
He is close to Sullivan’s family and has monitored his progress since the first whispers that the club were hothousing a “special talent”.
“What we don’t know yet – or we have only seen in glimpses – is whether he can do it against guys twice his age.”
‘Sullivan won’t be the next Adu’
Alongside the hype there has been scepticism.
It is incredibly tricky to predict the trajectory of wonderkids.
Freddy Adu, hailed as the next Pele when he emerged at the age of 14 only to become a journeyman in Europe’s lower leagues, remains a cautionary tale.
“He won’t be the next Adu,” Tannenwald says.
“The infrastructure of the league, the coaching staff, the academy structure, the education and support is on another level from what it was 21 years ago.”
A major signing coup
City – who have invested more than £3.5m in the deal – continue to monitor his progress closely and invited him to Manchester in the summer to train with their under-23s.
They beat off competition from Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt, as well as a clutch of rival Premier League clubs, to persuade his family that they were the right place for his development.
In an illustration of the meticulous work that goes into their academy recruitment, they presented “incredible” data that benchmarked Sullivan against other players of his age and showed him why they wanted him.
City’s highly-regarded director of recruitment Sam Fagbemi was personally involved in a signing that insiders believed was a sizeable coup.
With US interest in the sport taking off, there would be huge commercial benefits for City if Sullivan fulfiled his promise and became a Premier League regular in Manchester.
Great expectations
But that pipedream was always going to collide with reality at some point.
As part of the negotiations Sullivan, with City’s blessing, opted to stay in the US and sign his first professional contract with Philadelphia.
The alternative was to be farmed out to SK Lommel, the second division Belgian outfit that are part of the City Group network but there was a belief that staying close to his family – who have a long history in professional sports and football – would be a huge benefit.
So far he has played 15 times but Tannenwald says the expectation was that it would be more.
He earned plaudits in the under-17 World Cup though couldn’t break into the Union first team.
This season promises to be different, with Sullivan seen as potentially a key man in a reshaped Philadelphia squad.
There is a clause in the original agreement that allowed City to pull him out of the MLS club early if he was pulling up trees but with more first-team opportunities next season, it is highly unlikely that will be triggered.
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Instead the hope is that he becomes Philadelphia’s main man before getting experience of European football with one of City’s partner clubs.
After that, he either excels at the Etihad or is sold off for a tidy profit.
The next 12 months might tell us much about which route he is going to go down.
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