Lionel Messi brings Union teen phenom Cavan Sullivan into his orbit, or at least Adidas does

The apparel giant, which outfits Sullivan and Messi, has cast the 15-year-old phenom in a social media video series about young soccer talents who supposedly will get mentoring from the legend.

Teen phenom Cavan Sullivan (right) got to meet Lionel Messi (left) after the Union's game at Inter Miami last fall.Read morePhiladelphia Union

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Jan. 22, 2025, 9:00 a.m. ET

You might think it’s a bit far-fetched that a 15-year-old from Philadelphia could land in the personal orbit of Lionel Messi, the world’s most famous soccer player. And rest assured, you would not be alone — even when that 15-year-old is Cavan Sullivan, the Union’s teen phenom.

But here he is, as the hype machine cranks up even more heading into his first full professional season. Sullivan is among the latest players to be featured in an Adidas marketing campaign called the “Messi +10 collab,” including a video released by the apparel brand a few days ago.

In the video, Sullivan walks around Subaru Park, then kicks a soccer ball on the stadium’s field before sitting in a chair to talk for a few minutes. Among his remarks is a nod back to last year’s Union game at Inter Miami, where Messi posed for a photo with Sullivan after the game.

“Meeting him was pretty crazy to me,” Sullivan said. “Because it’s like, hey, I just met him, and now a month later, it’s like, would you like to be a part of the Messi +10 collab? And it’s like, yeah, obviously.”

If the words and the manner of his speech are reminders of his young age, the rest of the video marks him as having grown fully into the soccer world. Sullivan has worn Adidas apparel since before he officially turned pro last May, and in the video, he is decked out in Adidas gear: a tracksuit in the Union’s navy-and-gold colors — though with the company’s logo for its Messi branding, not a Union badge — and a purple T-shirt with the Messi logo.

Though the Union aren’t represented on Sullivan’s clothes, there are team logos all over the walls of Subaru Park as the cameras roll.

Wanting ‘to be the difference-maker’

Mixed among clips of Sullivan’s skills are bits of Messi playing for Argentina (though not Inter Miami) over the years, and of the two players talking separately about the same subjects.

The marketing pitch on Adidas’ YouTube page says: “The pressure on young footballers is immense, but it doesn’t have to define them. In Messi +10, Lionel Messi — football’s greatest of all time — mentors 10 rising stars, helping them embrace their unique talents, focus on their journeys, and reignite their passion for the game.”

Other soccer stars in the series include Lamine Yamal (Barcelona and Spain’s men), Vicky Lopez (Barcelona and Spain’s women), Antonio Nusa (RB Leipzig and Norway), Claudio Echeverri (Manchester City and Argentina), and Kenan Yildiz (Juventus and Turkey, in the same video as Sullivan).

We aren’t shown exactly what Messi’s mentoring entails, but just the idea of it is enough for any marketing department. Sullivan knows that as well as anyone, even at his age.

“I’m always going to be fearless,” he says on the video. “Every time I get the ball, I want to have an impact on the game — I want to be the difference-maker and the playmaker, and I want to kill the opponent. But obviously in reality, you can’t do that every play. So picking and choosing, decision-making, becomes a big part of your playing style.”

Messi certainly knows a lot about that, and has proved it with his many trophies: the 2022 World Cup, two Copa Américas, four UEFA Champions Leagues, 12 European domestic league titles, and even a few titles with Inter Miami.

His lone visit to the Philadelphia area so far came during the 2023 Leagues Cup, and his next will be on May 24 when the Union host Miami. The teams meet in Florida before then, on March 29.

Shouting out ‘a soccer family’

Sullivan doesn’t just have to turn to Messi for soccer inspiration, a fact he acknowledges in the video. His family provides plenty. The world might not know yet that his grandfather Larry is a Philadelphia soccer coaching legend, or that his parents played at Penn and remain connected to the sport.

“It’s a soccer family, it’s as simple as that,” Sullivan says. “My parents both played, all my brothers play, my cousins play, grandparents played. So it really is in our blood.”

Viewers even get a hint of his interest in other sports. If they don’t know what he’s doing when he pretends to swing a baseball bat, they need only scroll through his Instagram to find the answer. Sullivan played some baseball in his younger years before fully committing to soccer, as he noted when he threw out the first pitch at a Phillies game last July.

But he fell hardest for the sport that uses hands the least. In the video, he says that as a kid, “I kicked anything: a football, a toy, baseball, Wiffle ball, whatever it was.”

In three years, Sullivan will move to Manchester City, the English Premier League superpower that has a prearranged deal with the Union to sign him after he turns 18. (By law, he can’t move to England until that age.)

But there are things on his radar before then, including soccer’s biggest stage of all.

Dreaming of the World Cup

“My goal is to be in the 2026 World Cup in my home country,” Sullivan said, though he knows he faces long odds. Along with his youth, the U.S. team is already full of older players who are well-established on soccer’s stage, and play for Europeans teams in leagues better than Major League Soccer. Some of them grew up on the Union when Sullivan was in grade school, such as Brenden Aaronson and Mark McKenzie.

Though there might be one or two MLS players on the team, there probably won’t be many — and whenever there are, there’s always a public backlash among fans who believe anyone in MLS is inferior by default.

Then again, some of those fans love to talk about Sullivan’s highlights on social media. Clips of his run in a Union preseason scrimmage on Sunday went viral, just because they were there.

Sullivan also has yet to play for any U.S. national teams above the under-17 level. He might make the under-20s this year, but he still has a ways to go before reaching the senior squad.

He gets all of it.

“That would be crazy,” he said. “Obviously, I would only be 16 years old. But anything’s possible, so I think I can do it.”

If anyone’s going to have that kind of confidence, it might as well be him.