Born to soccer, two friends from Northeast Philly aim for the 2026 World Cup

Brandan Craig and Quinn Sullivan were playing soccer earlier this month in Honduras while their fathers were texting each other back home in Philadelphia.

Craig and Sullivan grew up in Northeast Philly, best friends who have been teammates since they were 4 years old. They were raised in rowhome neighborhoods and learned the game on the same city fields as their fathers.

Their fathers were Catholic League stars who both played Division I college soccer and married players from the women’s teams. The sons climbed the ranks together, signed their Union contracts on the same day, and sent a picture home earlier this month of them celebrating their win with the U.S. Under-20 national team in Honduras.

Craig and Sullivan were born 10 days apart in 2004 and met as month-old babies on the sidelines of their fathers’ men’s league games. They played together at Lighthouse Soccer Club in Somerton, Fishtown AC, and Philadelphia Soccer Club in the Northeast.

And now the fathers were watching on TV as the two buddies from Northeast Philly helped the U.S. return to the Olympics for the first time since 2008.

“Who would’ve thought that the two boys from Philadelphia are halfway around the world and qualified for the Olympics,” Andrew Craig texted Brendan Sullivan. “We’ve done well.”

Soccer has taken the teenagers to fields in Holland, Belgium, California, and Texas. They spent 28 days in Honduras without their parents before capturing the Concacaf Under-20 Championship, which secured Team USA’s place in next May’s Under-20 World Cup and the 2024 Olympics.

Sullivan, a midfielder from Bridesburg, scored six goals, and Craig, a defender from Morrell Park, started five of the seven games and delivered one of his signature free kicks to set up a key goal in the semifinal. It has been special, Sullivan said, to reach these heights alongside his childhood best friend.

But in a way, it almost feels normal.

“It’s always been like that,” said Sullivan’s father, Brendan. “It’s like nothing changed. They’ve always been on the same teams together. It just so happens that they’re on a pretty exclusive team right now, right? The odd thing is that two kids from the 191 zip codes even make a team like that. For them to be friends? Who knows what the odds would have been. I’m no actuary, but it’s pretty special when you step back and think about it.”

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Craig and Sullivan were just 7 when they were playing at Fishtown AC, so it was far too early to think they’d be playing together for the national team. But it was easy to see then how their talent set them apart. It seemed like every game included Craig blasting a free-kick goal or Sullivan, his energy never seeming to drain, poking in a late goal when the other team wore down.

They traveled once a month to tournaments all over the country and still laugh about the phrases their coach repeated and think about the saves their goalie made. But what they remember most is the grass they played on.

“Like one-sixth of our field was a baseball field,” Quinn Sullivan said. “Paxten Aaronson used to come with his team from Jersey, and all they remember is the baseball field. The baseball diamond was like in the corner of the soccer field. It’s funny that that’s what sticks with them most and it’s not getting beat by us.”

The field at Fishtown was rough, but it would have felt like a luxury to their fathers. The pitch — best known as Newts — next to the Market-Frankford El at Blair and Berks Streets was the city’s last remaining cinder soccer field. It was a rite of passage for generations of Philly kids to play at Newts, where bloody knees were common as players slid on the gravel-like surface that could have been mistaken for a parking lot.

“These boys barely played at Newts compared to what we played on as kids,” said Andrew Craig, as the city replaced the cinder with grass in 2010. “It was basically like playing on concrete. There was hardly any grass, and it was rocks.”

Quinn Sullivan said he was not complaining about the surface in Fishtown — the patchy grass and baseball dirt forced him and Craig to be even more accurate with each touch. It made them better, he said. And it makes it even easier to appreciate the conditions they have now.

“I didn’t come from a rich, white-collar neighborhood where I got everything handed to me,” Brandan Craig said. “No, I had to work for pretty much everything that I have.”

The road to Honduras went through Fishtown, but it can be traced decades earlier to Gransback Street in Kensington when Father Dan McLernan — North Catholic’s disciplinarian and soccer coach — pressured Larry Sullivan to join the team.

Kensington was one the city’s first soccer hotbeds, but Sullivan — the father of Brendan and grandfather of Quinn — was a baseball player good enough to try out for the major leagues. His interest in soccer changed when McLernan, Sullivan’s neighbor, pushed him to play.

“I think he basically made my dad play soccer to keep him out of trouble,” Brendan Sullivan said.

Larry Sullivan helped North — a soccer powerhouse before the school closed in 2010 — win three Catholic League titles. He left after graduation for Vietnam, where a piece of shrapnel injured his left hand, ending a promising baseball career. He returned home, enrolled at Temple, and joined the soccer team under legendary coach and fellow Kensington native Walter Bahr. The sport that he was forced to play became his passion.

Larry Sullivan has been an area coach since the 1970s and spent 17 years guiding the Villanova men’s team. Sullivan raised his children on soccer in Juniata Park, spent decades playing in men’s leagues, and the sport has defined his family ever since McLernan forced him to try it.

Chris Albright, Larry Sullivan’s nephew, played for the U.S. in the 2000 Olympics and 2006 World Cup. Brendan Sullivan played at St. Joseph’s Prep and Penn. And now Larry Sullivan’s grandson is scoring goals for Team USA.

“You’re born into it,” Brendan Sullivan said. “Aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone has played. The men and the women. Soccer is something that we do, but many people in my family have found success in other things. With the Sullivans, it’s find something you’re good at and be even better at it. I think some of that is what drives Quinn.”

Larry Sullivan’s decision to play soccer didn’t just set Quinn Sullivan on the path to Honduras. It also helped Brandan Craig get there.

Andrew Craig had two choices for high school upon moving to Torresdale after growing up on an Air Force base in England. He could pick Archbishop Ryan or Father Judge. His father, John, didn’t know much about soccer, but the Air Force master sergeant did know that Judge’s coach had served in the Army. And that was enough for him to tell his son he was going to play for Larry Sullivan.

Four years later, Craig scored the game-winning penalty kick to send Judge to the Catholic League championship before playing at Temple just like Larry Sullivan and building a career to inspire his son. It all leads back to Gransback Street.

Larry Sullivan helped mold the careers of Brendan Sullivan and Andrew Craig, who did the same for their sons. But the fathers weren’t the only ones.

“My mom played at Council Rock and Temple. She was a four-year starter and really good,” Brandan Craig said of his mother, Kristie. “A lot of people don’t give her the credit she deserves. They just say, ‘Me and my dad,’ but she also has athletic genes, and I’m blessed to call them parents.”

“Ditto to that by the way,” said Quinn Sullivan, whose mother, Heike, was a four-year starter at Penn. “My mom certainly doesn’t get enough credit for what she brought to the table athletically and in general with support and the learning side of the game. A captain at Penn, which gets overlooked at some times.”

Like the fathers, the mothers played against each other in college and played together on local women’s teams after school. These families — from Larry Sullivan coaching Andrew Craig at Judge to Kristie Craig and Heike Sullivan teaming together for the United German Hungarians — were intertwined well before Quinn Sullivan and Brandan Craig went to Honduras.

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“A lot of people just think me and Brendan knew each other through soccer,” said Andrew Craig. “But our families have known each other since the ’80s. Brendan and I played together. Our wives played together. Our kids have grown up together, which is astonishing. The level of success that they’ve had is mind-blowing. Two Philly kids who grew up blue-collar are now succeeding all the way around the world for their club and their country.”

Richie Graham needed a place to play soccer after graduating from Dartmouth in the early 1990s and moving to Philadelphia. Dartmouth coach Bobby Clark told him to go play for Larry Sullivan at FC Bayern, the club he helped start on Haldeman Avenue in the Northeast.

“Here’s Richie, this blue-eyed, blond-haired kid from Dartmouth,” Brendan Sullivan said. “The Ivy Leaguer showed up at Bayern, and you know what those fields looked like. He must’ve thought, ‘Where did Bobby Clark send me?’ But he came and played for my father for a couple years.”

Years later, Graham became a minority owner of the Union and created the YSC Academy, the Wayne school for elite soccer players that partners with the Union to combine professional soccer training with schooling. The school is modeled after the Vermont ski school that Graham attended and inspired by the academies used by soccer clubs in Europe.

Quinn Sullivan and Brandan Craig attended YSC for high school after graduating from Catholic elementary schools. They graduated while they were in Honduras, and even their high school diploma has a link to the priest on Gransback Street.

“Without Richie Graham, none of this is possible,” Brandan Craig said. “The academy and the school set us up to succeed here as homegrown players. He gave us the opportunity to train with the Union and to go to school there, which expedited our development. That’s not something that a lot of MLS academies have. They don’t have an actual school by themselves. They might have part of a school or go to an online school, but not an in-person, building, actual school like we did.”

Sullivan and Craig’s graduating class was just 14 students, as they didn’t have the traditional high school experience their fathers had. But it led them to a professional soccer contract and the chance to play for the U.S. national team.

“It wasn’t traditional, but I don’t want to call it a sacrifice,” said Quinn Sullivan, whose father is a teacher at YSC. “I willingly made the decision, and I was so happy with it that the social life that I left behind wasn’t necessarily a sacrifice. It was just the right decision for me. Going to such a great school with a great education, and the ability to play soccer, I don’t want to call it a sacrifice.”

Sullivan and Craig should be called back next year to the national team for the U-20 World Cup since they played such key roles during the qualifying tournament. They played together for the first time with the Union on Friday night and manager Jim Curtin — he too was coached by Larry Sullivan — said the four Union players (Sullivan, Craig, Aaronson, and Jack McGlynn) who helped the U.S. win in Honduras could see more playing time as the season rolls on.

In two years, the two kids from Northeast Philly could be on the 2024 Olympic roster in Paris. Who would have thought?

“I said, ‘Yeah, I believe it,’ but would I have believed it 20 years ago? No, of course not,” Brendan Sullivan said of the text he sent back to Andrew Craig after their sons won in Honduras. “To imagine it would have been surreal, but when you see the boys work and you see them work toward it, it becomes more believable. I’ve seen the work they put in. Nothing shocks me. None of this happened by accident.”

The future seems bright for Sullivan and Craig, but they’re still just 18 and living with their parents. It’s too early to know where their careers will go from here.

But it’s easy to dream about 2026, when the World Cup comes to Philadelphia. They’ll be 22, just around the age of the average men’s national team player. And maybe if the U.S. team finds itself that summer at Lincoln Financial Field, the two friends from Northeast Philly will be on the field.

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A thought like that wouldn’t be possible without a priest who pushed a kid to play, four parents who inspired their sons to follow them on the field, and two buddies who chased their dreams.

“It’s kind of a funny story,” Quinn Sullivan said. “When it was first decided that North America would be the location for 2026, I told my dad how cool it would be to watch. The first thing he said to me, and I’ll never forget it, is that’s not the right way to think. You should be saying, ‘How great would it be to play here?’ From that moment forward, when that comes up, my first thought is ‘I want to be playing in it.’ You don’t know where we’ll be, but the hope is we’ll be playing together on the senior team. It would be super special, but there’s a lot of work that has to be done to get to that goal.”