Five years ago, when he joined the United States soccer team, Tyler Adams assumed a leadership role. He now holds the title.
Adams was appointed captain at the unusually young age of 23. He was the youngest player at this year’s tournament and the youngest American since Walter Bahr in 1950.
“I want to be successful. “First and foremost, I’m a highly competitive person,” Adams remarked after Gregg Berhalter’s announcement on Sunday. “I intend to hold my peers to the same level. I don’t want to lose and have to say, “Today, you let me down” I simply want to ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of energy, mentality, and lack of irritation — that we all believe in the same thing. And, yes, I believe I’ve been doing that from childhood.”
Adams was picked captain by approximately 35 players in a poll held in September and revealed the day before the national team’s opening match against Wales.
He will be the first African-American to wear the United States’ armband during an entire World Cup. Due to Claudio Reyna’s torn right quadriceps, Earnie Stewart, then 33 and the son of an African-American serviceman, captained the United States in the 2002 opener against Portugal.
“We’ve been working with the leadership council for the past three and a half years,” Berhalter said of a group that featured Adams, Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, and Walker Zimmerman. “We inquired as to what they desired to do for the World Cup. And they believed it would be best to pick a captain for the World Cup.”
Adams is only the second captain announced for this year’s competition that is under 30 years old. Since the 2018 World Cup, when he was 24 years old, England attacker Harry Kane has served as captain of the Three Lions. Kane is currently 29 years old.
Adams, a native of Wappinger, New York, has previously led the national team nine times, including seven victories, one loss, and one tie.
Berhalter had swapped the armband since his December 2018 hiring. Pulisic captained the U.S. eleven times, while Zimmerman did so six times. Adams served as captain for seven of the fourteen World Cup qualifiers, Pulisic for four, and Zimmerman for three.
“When you joined the national team, you were a rookie, right? Adams added, “You don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.” “You want to come in, you want to do your job, and while that hasn’t changed when I first joined the national team, I’m now the person people rely on when they need to speak with Greg and say something.”
Each game in 1950 was captained by a different United States national team captain. Bahr was 23 years, 3 months, and 2 days old when Chile defeated him 5-2 on July 2, 1950. On Monday, Adams will be 23 years, 9 months, and 8 days old.
Ed McIlvenny (25) donned the captain’s armband for the infamous 1-0 shock of England in Belo Horizonte, while Harry Keough (22) wore the armband during the opening loss against Spain.
Adams made his national team debut in November 2017 and has since appeared 32 times for his country. He made his MLS debut with the New York Red Bulls in 2015, transferred to RB Leipzig in 2019 and then to Leeds United during the offseason.
“Tyler is an extremely mature young man, and you can tell the moment you start talking to him,” Berhalter said. His teammates are well aware of what to expect from him. They are aware that he is going to participate on the field. They are aware that he will be thinking about the game. They anticipate that he will be attentive to the nuances of the game, as he is not just a competitor but also a strategist. And I believe this is beneficial to the group because he calms people down and is a somebody that people support.”
Previous World Cup captains were 24-year-old Mike Windischmann in 1990, 25-year-old Tony Meola in 1994, 37-year-old Thomas Dooley in 1998, 28-year-old Reyna in 2002 and again in 2006, 31-year-old Carlos Bocanegra in 2010 and 31-year-old Clint Dempsey in 2014.
“We’re not a group of guys that want to be captain,” McKennie stated on Saturday. “Whoever possesses it has it. The mission remains unchanged. The objective remains the same, and all 26 players, regardless of position, must be on the same page and have the same duty, which is to compete and win games.”