Four Union players led the U.S. men’s soccer team to end its 16-year Olympics drought

The last time the U.S. men’s soccer program played at the Olympics, Peter Nowak coached Freddy Adu, Michael Orozco Fiscal, and Chris Seitz.

But we aren’t talking about those years when Nowak was the Union’s first manager and those three players were some of the first to wear the jersey.

No, this was 2008. So long ago that the Union were still two years away from playing a game. Major League Soccer had awarded Philadelphia an expansion franchise for 2010 by then, but it wouldn’t have a name for a while longer.

It was so long ago that future Union players Maurice Edu and Charlie Davies were age 22 when they played in Beijing; Jozy Altidore was 18; and a 36-year-old Brian McBride was one of three overage players allowed on the under-23 squad.

That’s the context for what happened Friday night in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. A U.S. under-20 men’s team with four Union players in starring roles routed the home team, 3-0, in Concacaf’s age-group tournament semifinals to clinch a berth in the 2024 Games. When the U.S. under-23 team arrives in Paris, it will end a 16-year Olympics drought.

How important has the Union quartet been? Heading into Sunday’s tournament final against the Dominican Republic (8 p.m, TUDN), Paxten Aaronson has delivered five goals and one assist, including the semifinal’s opening goal in just the third minute. Quinn Sullivan has six goals and three assists, including the semifinal’s third tally.

» READ MORE: Paxten Aaronson keeps up a family tradition of playmaking skill

Jack McGlynn has one spectacular goal and a huge pile of intangibles. And centerback Brandan Craig has started four of the six games so far on a defensive line that has allowed just two goals all tournament. He also has quite a free kick, with one of them assisting Aaronson’s opener Friday.

It’s one thing for the Union to have a high-level youth academy, as is well-known around MLS and around Philadelphia at this point. But what the club’s players have done in Honduras is really something.

“I think the best part about the Philly guys is that they don’t have a clique mentality,” U.S. coach Mikey Varas said. “They’re team-first guys. They adapt really, really well to different scenarios, and they do a great job of bringing the team together. And, without a doubt, all four of them were tremendously important.

“I can’t say that I thought for sure they were going to play as good as they did. … Every time we challenged these guys, and that goes across the board, they’ve had incredible responses.”

» READ MORE: Jack McGlynn was the Union's teenage penalty shootout sensation in last year's playoffs

The bonds between the players are clear, even to fans who’ve only watched on TV from afar.

“We’re all really good friends, so we have a really good connection on the field, and we show that every time we step on the field together,” McGlynn said.

Added Aaronson: “Knowing them since I was so young, and getting to achieve such a milestone for your country, I know all of us take such pride in that. It was so great sharing the field in such a remarkable moment we’ll remember forever.”

Sullivan and Craig have an especially tight bond. The two Northeast Philadelphia natives — Bridesburg and Morrell Park, respectively, to be precise — played at the famed Lighthouse Boys Club in Kensington before joining the Union’s academy.

Their families are close, too. Sullivan said they shared a rental home in Frisco, Texas, where Cavan Sullivan and Andrew Craig played for the Union’s under-15 team in the MLS Next Showcase tournament. The Union squad reached the round of 16 before bowing out.

(The Union’s under-17s are in their tournament final, by the way, at 8 p.m. Sunday against Columbus, on MLS’s YouTube page.)

Brandan Craig said he’s “getting constant text messages from family members, from friends … It’s really special to see that, and it’s lovely to hear it, because this is something that not many players get to do.”

Sullivan has Olympic soccer in his genes. His cousin, former Union player and assistant technical director Chris Albright, was on the 2000 U.S. team that finished fourth in Sydney, the best U.S. men’s performance in Summer Games history.

» READ MORE: Quinn Sullivan’s bicycle-kick goal in his first MLS start was a dream moment for one of Philly soccer’s most famous families

That’s just the start of the quartet’s roots in the sport. Sullivan’s parents, Brendan and Heike, played at Penn. Brendan’s father, Larry, played at Temple for Walter Bahr, then coached at colleges and high schools across the region. Union coach Jim Curtin played for him at Villanova.

Craig’s English father, also named Andrew, played at Temple. And everyone in American soccer knows Paxten’s brother Brenden these days.

“He texts me, he calls me after the games, just telling me how proud he is,” Paxten said of Brenden. “That’s all I can ask for, is making my family proud. So it’s been great.”

The last words go to McGlynn, who summed up the mood for himself and the team as a whole.

“Everyone’s been telling me how we’re all making our country back home proud,” he said. “And that’s what our job is here, to do it for everybody back home — even the people that don’t watch soccer, or don’t even know who we are. We’re doing it for them because they’re part of the U.S., and we’re representing the crest.”

» READ MORE: The dream has come true for Brenden Aaronson, with Leeds United and the U.S. men’s soccer team