Prodigies: Bright Lights In Sports

CBS News Profiles Michelle Wie & Freddy Adu

(CBS)  Just over a year ago, sports prodigy Freddy Adu made his debut as a professional soccer player, pulling down a record salary of $500,000 a year.

That's not bad for a 14-year-old. But as Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, Adu has been offered even bigger money.

Adu can do just about anything he wants with a soccer ball, including fake much older players right out of their cleats. People who know say that he could develop into the best player in America, and in the entire soccer-mad world.

"I just love it so much, you know? When I’m out there on the field, I’m in a whole different world," says Adu. "It's like, I'm just having so much fun."

And he gets paid a lot, too, to just have fun. "I couldn't ask for a better life," he says.

Adu does seem to have a charmed life. He gets half a million dollars a year to play for DC United, the team he grew up watching. At an age when most kids are begging their parents for a higher allowance, he’s got a million-dollar contract with Nike, and another endorsement deal with Pepsi.

"We think he’s going to be a great one," says Bruce Arena, the most influential figure in American soccer. He's also coach of the men's national team that will compete for the World Cup in 2006. It's a team that Adu hopes to make.

"He's strong, he's quick, he's agile," says Arena. "He's got good balance, and he’s got great vision. Very special."

Adu learned the game as soon as he learned to walk in his native Ghana, in West Africa. "There were no coaches, no one to tell you what to do. It was just, you play and learn stuff on your own," he says.

His mother, Emelia, says Adu was always holding a soccer ball. And Adu says it was during those early days in Ghana when his mother first encouraged her soccer prodigy: "My mother was always the supplier of soccer balls. And so people were always knocking on my door, trying to get me out so we could play."

Adu's street soccer days ended in 1998, after his parents entered a visa lottery at the U.S. embassy in Ghana. He was 8 years old. "I didn't even have a ball when I first came," recalls Adu. "I didn't even have a soccer ball, so it was hard."

But life got even harder. After they settled near Washington, D.C., Adu says his father just abandoned the family one day. "I don't see him," he says. "He's completely out of the picture now."

Emelia suddenly became the sole breadwinner for Adu and his younger brother, and worked two jobs to make ends meet.

"She would wake up at 5 in the morning, leave at 6, goes to work. She’s done, she gets off work at 6, you know, in the evening to go to work overnight job," recalls Adu. "She worked, I mean, unbelievable amount of hours."

Meanwhile, Adu’s soccer skills were noticed on the playground, and he was recruited for a local league team. In less than a year, he was the best player on an all-star team, playing with kids four and five years older than he was.

"One of the big soccer teams in Europe, actually an Italian team, didn’t they offer you a big, huge, amount of money to come and play for them?" asks Stahl.

"Yeah," says Adu. "It was $750,000 to play for Inter Milan."

At the time, Adu was just 10, and his mother said no. Was he upset? "No," he says. "But it was just so much money. Why not just take it? But you know what? She was looking out for our well-being."

Eventually, his mother did agree to let Adu attend a kind of soccer boarding school in Florida, run by the U.S. Soccer Federation. He became a citizen, and officially joined the United States under-17 team. But before his professional debut, Adu's mom insisted on one more thing: that he complete an accelerated academic program for athletes in Florida that allowed him to finish high school at 14.

Are there any ways in which this kid is still able to be a kid?

"I play a lot of Playstation, and always trying to look pretty for the girls," says Adu.

But there are expectations being heaped on him. You hear that he's the next Pele, that he'll be the youngest player ever in a World Cup, and that he'll finally make America as mad about soccer as the rest of the world is right now.

On draft day, Adu, the No. 1 pick, may not have measured up to major league soccer’s other top rookies. But his $500,000 salary dwarfs even the veterans.

It's become a cliché that every rookie with a big contract buys his mother a house. But Adu may be the first one ever to do it, and then go home and live with her.

"I wanted to get her a place, a home with a little bit more space," says Adu. "The kitchen is just huge, because my mom is, she lives there, man. She loves being in the kitchen."

Is she a good cook? "Oh my goodness. She could be the best cook ever, man," says Adu.

He adds that his mother doesn't work any more: "She's done. She's had enough. You know, she's worked so hard."

"What I know of Mrs. Adu, she's pretty sharp," says Arena. "And she's done a very good job in corralling Freddy a bit, and not letting his head get too big."

You know you're a star when you're on "Letterman" at an age when most kids aren't allowed to stay up late enough to watch the show. Still, the real test of how Adu will deal with the spotlight and the pressure will come on the soccer field.

"They say that there's a bulls-eye on your back sometimes when you play," says Arena. "He's going to have one on his back, and on his chest, on his forehead, and on his legs."

"I don't have to prove myself to any of those guys that, that I'm better than them," says Adu. "I'm just going to go out there and play, man."

How's he going to get to practice? He's 14, and he doesn't drive. "Actually, I don't know," says Adu. "My mom is probably going to have to take me back and forth."

Adu is now 16, and in his second season, his mom still drives him to practice. But he hopes to get his license soon.