The next stop for 14-year-old phenom Cavan Sullivan is the Union’s reserve team

The cacophony of hype that exploded around Cavan Sullivan during the winter has finally quieted down, and that’s probably a good thing.

Though observers inside and outside the Union believe he’s the best prospect in team history, he’s still just 14 years old. The many European suitors that want him can’t sign him until he turns 16, and teams in the United Kingdom specifically — such as Manchester City, where there’s been mutual affection — can’t do so until he’s 18.

For now, Sullivan remains part of the Union’s youth pipeline. He’s been splitting his time between the Union’s reserve team and the under-17 youth squad, which he’s expected to play with in the prestigious Generation Adidas Cup tournament that starts at the end of the month.

That will undoubtedly bring a new round of attention, not least from a hive of international scouts. But while it’s one thing to hear from people who want him, it’s another to hear from someone who actually knows the attacker well.

Union II coach Marlon LeBlanc fits that bill. He’s known Sullivan since the player was 8 years old, from the Union academy generally to Sullivan’s being a teammate of LeBlanc’s son Kellen. And when LeBlanc was starting out as West Virginia University’s men’s soccer coach in 2006, Cavan’s grandfather Larry coached then-Big East rival Villanova.

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“I like to tease him that I’ve never seen a kid get built up as much as I’ve ever seen [with] Cav, and he’s so down to earth,” LeBlanc said. “All of this extra hype that goes on about him, it doesn’t get to his head. It’s what also allows him to come into our environment and still be brave and still be bold.”

Whether Sullivan decides to start his pro career with the Union or elsewhere, LeBlanc believes it’s his job “to develop Cavan no matter what’s going to happen.” And he believes that Sullivan’s family has done “a really good job [of] just kind of keeping all the noise, separate from his football.”

“That’s all happening on the side, and I don’t know how much Cavan’s involved in that process,” LeBlanc said. “But if you were to talk to him, if you were to watch him, you wouldn’t think he’s got anything to do with it. He plays as hard for the Philadelphia Union and what he wants to do with us, without really being mindful of anything else that’s going on.”

There’s nothing new in other sports, especially basketball, about teenage prospects getting attention while they’re high schoolers. Sullivan isn’t even at that point yet, but in soccer this isn’t new. Teams across the world regularly bring players to the pros in their mid-teens, even world superpowers like Spain’s Barcelona.

It happens ever more in MLS these days, and it happens in the NWSL now too. So while it’s natural to want to pump the brakes on Sullivan’s hype train, everyone — including at the Union — knows it shouldn’t be stopped.

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“His first minutes with us in preseason, and I gave him three things to do,” LeBlanc said. “That was: don’t get kicked, I told him to go kick somebody, and I told him to go have fun and express himself. And he was ear to ear, you know, in terms of a smile on his face.”

LeBlanc has also been cautious at the right times. Taking Sullivan to the reserve squad’s preseason in Florida “overloaded him a little bit,” code for a minor injury, and playing with the under-17s is “bringing his fitness levels back up again.”

As the Generation Adidas Cup doesn’t start until March 30, there could be an opportunity for Sullivan to play for the reserves before then. The team starts its new season with two home games, against Toronto FC’s reserves on Sunday and the New England Revolution’s reserves on March 24.

“He’ll have a great G.A. Cup run with the 17s, hopefully, and then we’ll start to really work him into the second team,” LeBlanc said. “You might see him before that — I won’t say a whole lot more than that — but he’s ready for the level. There are a number of those kids who are going to feature in the second team from the U-17s, but Cavan’s certainly one of the best ones that we have coming through.”

The depth of LeBlanc’s relationship with Sullivan surely helps the dynamics. A prospect surrounded by so much hype could easily tune coaches out, but LeBlanc said Sullivan hasn’t. They talk daily, with LeBlanc attending the under-17 team’s practices when not watching his own squad.

“I can probably speak to Cavan in a way that you know, a father speaks to a son, or maybe even give him a kick in the backside, and he can take it,” he said.

LeBlanc particularly praised Sullivan’s father Brendan, and brothers Quinn (a current Union first-team player), Ronan, and Declan, for their influence on Cavan.

“The kid is a really, really humble kid,” LeBlanc said. “You see all this stuff, and I think It would destroy a lot of young talents to see all that kind of hype and not know how to deal with it. That’s not Cav’s issue.”

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