Philadelphia Union’s season has gone sideways, but Cavan Sullivan’s first MLS goal offered a glimpse of why the club’s patient approach with its teenage star may still pay off.Cavan Sullivan started the play. And then he finished it. It was a sequence of making all the right decisions: measured, precise, a little bit grown up. He received the ball on the right, played a floated pass across the box to the left, and then ghosted into the middle. The cut-back came. Two Philadelphia Union players let the ball slide past them. Sullivan tucked home. It wasn’t the prettiest first goal in MLS for the 16-year-old, but it was a professional one – clean, incisive, mature. That strike – if it can be called that – was emblematic of the way the teenager has grown into the Union side over the past few months. Since making his debut at 14 years old – and signed to a pre-contract with Man City shortly before then – Sullivan has been the subject of immense hype. The Union, meanwhile, have wrapped him in cotton wool. There have been calls for a struggling side to rip the handbrake off, to let the kid cook. Instead, his minutes have been managed, and the moments have come. Indeed, in a season where everything has gone wrong for the Union, a steady hand on a kid still maturing might be the sole shining light – and pay dividends for an immense talent in the long run.
