The right back was unknown even to some of his team-mates when first called up to the US squad a year ago; but he is certainly making a name for himself nowAlex Freeman and his USA team-mates celebrate after his goal in the 2-0 win over Australia in the World Cup Group D match last week. Photograph: Jamie Squire/Getty Images Sat Jun 27 2026 - 06:00 • 4 MIN READA rainy November evening at Lambeau Field 26 years ago. With the sides level at 20 points apiece in overtime, the nation was watching live on Monday Night Football. At third and four on the Minnesota Vikings’ 43-yard line, the Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre saw the blitz coming and unfurled a hopeful lob down the right side towards Antonio Freeman, his preferred wide-receiver target of the time. The Vikings’ cornerback Cris Dishman tracked the arc perfectly, parried the pass without quite being able to catch it and started to celebrate a crucial stop as the ball tumbled towards the grass. Except Dishman didn’t notice that the dropping ball never touched the ground to officially end the play. Instead, it bounced off the left shoulder of the stricken Freeman as he lay on his back. Instinctively sticking out his right hand to cradle the greasy pill, the Packers’ No. 86 scrambled to his feet and gambolled into the end zone for the winning touchdown. An amalgam of improvisation, awareness and skill, his dexterity initially baffled the commentators until Al Michaels figured out what had happened and famously shouted: “He did what?”Across a bruising decade in the NFL, Freeman scored 61 touchdowns, caught 477 passes for 7,251 yards and won Super Bowl XXXI with the Packers. His job was to sprint down the field and try to catch the ball in mid-flight while being bodily assaulted by maniacal defensive backs. He did it so well he was once the highest-paid wide receiver in the league and earned almost $20 million (€17.6 million) in his career. Tough gig. Tough man. This, then, is the character who sobbed uncontrollably when Mauricio Pochettino told him his 21-year-old son Alex had the potential to be one of the best right backs in the world.Antonio Freeman with the Green Bay Packers in October 2000. Photograph: Jonathan Daniel/Allsport “I could have been the best receiver for Green Bay,” said Freeman. “I would never be considered one of the best in the world. I always had Jerry Rice and then came Randy Moss and a host of other guys. To come from a coach like that who is so accomplished and has seen so much soccer in his life to make such a statement, man, it just brought tears to my eyes. When you say, ‘He’s a Pro Bowler’, Okay, he’s one of the best in the NFL. When you have somebody say one of the best in the world, like, we’re not even talking about the US, we are talking about international soccer and Pochettino has seen a lot of soccer. For me, it’s a huge statement.”Even if every assessment of any footballer at a World Cup comes franked with a health warning regarding the inbuilt tendency towards exaggeration and hype, Freeman’s ascent has been kind of remarkable. Rejected from the Inter Miami youth academy in his mid-teens, he left home at 15 to sign for Orlando City. Just over a year ago, he started his first Major League Soccer match and within three months of that, Pochettino awarded him his first cap. Arriving into an international squad where some of his team-mates openly admitted they had never heard of him, Freeman became an ever-present for the US in last summer’s Gold Cup. At the end of the January transfer window, Villareal paid just $4 million for him, and he made nine cameo appearances in what turned into a successful push for third place in La Liga and Champions League qualification. Then he reacted quickest to head the second goal in the Americans’ victory over Australia to punch their ticket to the last 32. As if to the manner born.Alex Freeman leaps to head the ball into the Australian net and help clinch top spot in World Cup Group D for the USA. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images Having the 6ft 2in scion of an NFL great starring for the soccer team has respawned an especially fatuous argument that starts up every time the United States reaches a World Cup. No matter how things are going on the field, some lazy talkshow host will posit the bizarre contention that the country would be nailed on to win the tournament if only the best athletes in each state were funnelled towards soccer instead of the NFL and the NBA. All it would take is a team of behemoths apparently.The kind of nonsensical hypothesis usually formulated by a drunk on a barstool who doesn’t understand soccer somehow gets a media airing every four years. When I first heard the debate, it was so long ago the pundit was prattling on about the late Kobe Bryant’s generation and how they could have dominated with a ball at their feet. You know, it’s that easy. Through the years, websites have gone as far as creating alternative USA XIs culled from NBA and NFL teams. Wide receivers as goalies, running backs as wingers and point guards playing upfront. As if the skills are that transferable. Alex Freeman played pee-wee gridiron and basketball in his Florida youth and showed promise in both, but it was his stepfather Jake Hinkle who introduced him to soccer and became his first coach. When Antonio watched those games, he quickly realised his child looked happier with the ball at his feet rather than in his hands.“The real story is Alex didn’t want to play football, and he didn’t want to tell his dad that,” said Freeman’s mother Rochelle. “He didn’t have I guess the words to say it then. He just wanted to make his own lane and his own path.”That he has done.IN THIS SECTION