For Jim Curtin, Cavan Sullivan signing with the Union is a ‘full-circle moment’

Union manager Jim Curtin doesn’t get emotional in public very often. Maybe when one of his players scores a big goal, but that’s about it.

On Thursday, though, Curtin was nearly moved to tears over one aspect of Cavan Sullivan’s arrival to the big time.

A quarter-century ago, Cavan’s grandfather Larry was Curtin’s college coach at Villanova. In Curtin’s senior season, Cavan’s father, Brendan, joined the Wildcats’ coaching staff.

Now Curtin is coaching the 14-year-old who might become the best ever from a family he called “kind of Philadelphia soccer royalty.”

“There’s an element of debt, excitement, a kind of full-circle moment,” Curtin said at a news conference in Cavan’s honor Thursday at Subaru Park. The precocious attacking midfielder sat next to him on the dais, and much of the Sullivan family — Brendan, mother Heike, and brothers Quinn, Ronan, and Declan — sat in the front row of seats.

» READ MORE: Why Cavan Sullivan, hyped as the world’s best 14-year-old soccer player, chose to turn pro with the Union

Curtin praised Larry as “a guy that taught me so much about the game, about being a leader a person, and a good soccer player as well,” and called Brendan “the first guy that I saw that was a professional-level player, that I saw day-in and day-out.”

Though MLS’s launch in 1996 was a year before Curtin started at Villanova, American players were still hard to find. The sport certainly wasn’t what it is now, where there are countless players and fans can watch every big league worldwide.

Sullivan’s signing with the Union is a symbol of that, too. For as much as everyone wanted him to start his pro career at the hometown club, the Union still had to make an offer worth picking over starting at England’s Manchester City, Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, or other major European clubs that wanted him.

In the end, Sullivan will get the best of both worlds. He’ll play for the Union until he’s 18, then move to Man City for a pre-agreed price of around $5 million.

And he’ll get paid plenty before then. Sullivan signed the largest homegrown player contract in Major League Soccer history, multiple sources told The Inquirer, with the league breaking its homegrown player salary cap — around $200,000 a year — to get the deal done.

» READ MORE: ‘Cavan is special’: Union’s Ernst Tanner says Cavan Sullivan is one of the best he’s ever seen

It will be just over $500,000 per season, one source with knowledge of the matter said, surpassing a special benchmark in league history: the salary Freddy Adu, American soccer’s first 14-year-old phenom, earned as a rookie with D.C. United 20 years ago.

MLS wasn’t ready for a player of his age back then, and Adu endured a tumultuous career that included 20 months with the Union in 2011-13.

The landscape is far better now, and the Union are a big reason why. Their youth academy includes a full-time high school for top prospects that Cavan attends, that his oldest brother, Quinn — now a Union first-team veteran — attended before, and that Brendan works at as a history teacher.

On top of that, the Union have sent some of those players on to big international stages. Brenden and Paxten Aaronson, Mark McKenzie, and Auston Trusty all grew up here, play in major European leagues, and have been with the senior U.S. national team.

“We have a track record now,” academy director Jon Scheer said. “We have a history of developing players within our academy, within MLS, and transitioning them on to bigger clubs in the global game. … I think we now have a proof of concept with our competitive strategy that families and players can truly believe in.”

» READ MORE: Is Cavan Sullivan really that good? Here’s what to know about the Union academy and its teen phenom.

Of course, lots of people in town want to know when Sullivan will play for the Union’s first team. Curtin preached patience, but also didn’t hide from Sullivan’s immense potential.

“The game will tell us,” he said. “He’s going to work hard and get on the field on merit first and foremost. But I’ll just say publicly, it’s a lot closer than people realize. Our team, whatever we need that week, he’s going to be called upon quickly, because he deserves it.”

The odds are that if we’re going to see Sullivan with the first team this year, it will be during the late-summer Leagues Cup tournament instead of the regular season. The Union’s group stage opener is July 27, and if Sullivan plays in that game, he’ll break Adu’s record for MLS’s youngest ever player by two days.

Sullivan will definitely play for the Union’s reserve team before then, and probably often. Coach Marlon LeBlanc has known Sullivan since he was 8, and Sullivan has already played for the reserves as an amateur a few times. In his debut on March 24, he came off the bench and created the game-winning assist.

» READ MORE: Cavan Sullivan wants ‘to win the World Cup with the USA’

“My job is to put him in a position to be successful,” LeBlanc said. Everybody wants to see Cavan out there on Saturday night [when the first team plays], but Cavan understands the process to get to Saturday night. We’re going to make sure that he’s learning, he’s progressing, and he’s held accountable as well.”

But they’ll also let him express himself on the field.

“We’re not going to stifle his creativity,” LeBlanc said. “We’re going to give him a platform to do it, but we’re going to make sure that he does it the right way. And I know Cav, and he’s going to do it the right way — and he doesn’t want it any other way, and that’s one of the best things about working with Cavan.”

It matters a lot to LeBlanc, and the organization as a whole, that Sullivan should have the time and space to be a kid.

“He’s good enough to play and be there, but I want to make sure that people remember that he’s 14 years old,” LeBlanc said. “That will be a big part of his development — him getting to stay in his home, in his bed, in his house, with his family, is only going to speed that part up, too. And he gets to do this at his own timeline, his own process.”