Just 16, the striker already has a historic performance under his belt, but he's out to make sure that his career isn't defined by that game
On the morning of Feb. 10, 16-year-old striker Chase Adams was just another youth player. By the time he went to bed, he was a social media sensation. By the next morning, he was being compared to his idol, Erling Haaland. It all happened that fast.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Adams’ life changed. That’s what happens when you deliver the most absurd goalscoring performance in American youth soccer history.
By the final whistle, Adams had scored 10 goals, leading the U.S. U17 men's national team to a record-breaking 22-0 win over the U.S. Virgin Islands and helping secure a spot in the U17 World Cup. The 22 goals set a new record for a U.S. team in World Cup qualifying, while Adams' 10 shattered the mark for most goals scored by an American player in a single qualifying match.
They started calling him Baby Haaland, and Adams fully embraces it. After all, how cool must it be to remind people of one of your favorite players?
"Maybe he's heard of me!" Adams says with a laugh. "It's pretty sick to think about that idea."
Even if the Manchester City star isn’t aware of him – at least not yet – many in American soccer now are. With every shot that found its mark, Adams' life changed a little more. He’s okay with that. After all, this is what he’s always wanted: to be a player who commands attention with one strike of the ball – or, in this case, 10 in 90 minutes.
"I'm trying to handle it like nothing's changed," Adams tells GOAL. "Obviously, now I've had interviews with and and all of that, but my family and my host family in Columbus are doing a really good job of making sure my head doesn't get too big. They keep me grounded, and a lot of jokes get thrown my way.
"Still, it's different. After the game, I jumped from like 3,000 followers to 6,000, and now I have 9,000. A lot of it is just jokes, I know, but one game isn't going to decide my future for, hopefully, the next 15 years. I hope this is an opportunity to show what I can do in the future. It makes me want to push myself even more because this is what I've always wanted – to be known because of my play."
That’s Adams’ goal now – proving he's more than just this one moment. It won’t be easy. Topping a 10-goal performance is nearly impossible. But while it may feel like it's all downhill from here, there's still so much ahead.
His viral moment was just the beginning, but it hasn’t drastically changed his path with the Columbus Crew. He remains part of the club’s youth pipeline, just as he was before. An MLS debut is a goal, but realistically, it's still a ways off. Life off the field may be different, but with the Crew, it’s business as usual.
Those 10 goals will always be part of his story, but Adams hopes they’ll become just a footnote in something much bigger – just like the player whose nickname he now carries.
"Once the dice do fall your way, all you can do is just take it and run," he says. "You don't look back."
GOAL sat down with Adams for the latest edition of the Scouting series, to learn more about his game, how he’s handling the spotlight, and his quest to prove he’s more than just a viral moment…
Where it all began
Adams doesn't believe his 10-goal outburst was a personal record. It definitely is in a meaningful game, but, realistically, some of the less meaningful ones are a bit fuzzy. It's what happens when you score so much growing up. He knows he'd put up numbers, and he thinks he got 13 one time, but, hey, who can remember?
"It was bad," Adams recalls of that 13-goal outburst. "We gave up one goal and I was actually so upset. That's just who I am. I can't do with not chasing perfection."
From an early age, Adams had a knack for scoring goals in bunches, so much so that things got a little ugly. The son of a coach, Troy, Adams routinely tore up his youth leagues, even at the youngest of ages. It ended up with him getting kicked out of his first league at age four. The other kids weren't having fun anymore, and Adams had to go.
"The parents were just like, 'We can't have him out there, he's too good and he's not letting our kids play', so we had to go find a more competitive league," he recalls. "At four, you don't really know the difference. It wasn't until I was six, though, that I realized that I was maybe a little bit different than most kids. Honestly, my dad did a great job controlling me because I always wanted to score and keep scoring. A lot of times, and this is why I am who I am today, he made me understand that you can't just physically dominate. When you're older, everyone will catch up. He limited me. You can't just kick the ball and run. You have to learn how to play the game with smarts."
Adams' father, he says, remains his biggest influence. He didn't actually start watching professional soccer regularly until 2021. Until then, Adams learned about the game through his dad and, perhaps more importantly, the players his dad coached at local Naperville High School. Those were his role models. The one he looked up to most? Pat Flynn, who went on to earn All-American status before playing at Bowling Green.
"That was the player I wanted to be," Adams says. "I loved him. I hated touching things, like the inside of pumpkins, so my dad called him and had him say that he pulls the goo out from the inside of pumpkins. Then I was like 'Okay, fine I'll do it'. I looked up to him so much."
It wasn't long before Adams' own career took off with his move to Columbus to join the Crew system, but Adams' big break wouldn't happen in Crew yellow, but in Red, White, and Blue.
AdvertisementThe big break
It didn't really hit Adams until halftime, when his U.S. U17 teammates made sure that it did, in fact, hit him. Halftime is so often a time to refocus or adjust. During this particular break, though, all Adams could do was smile a bit.
He'd already scored six of his 10 goals. He'd added an assist for good measure, too. The U.S. were up 14-0, and it was at that moment that Adams realized that he was, in fact, scoring a lot of goals.
"People kept looking at me like 'Is it six now? How many do you have', and I didn't know," he says. "I knew I had a few, five or six, and I didn't go back out there saying 'Let's get 10!'. It was something where I said, 'If it comes to me, I will'. In the locker room, they were all making jokes, but I was just focused on the next.
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Chase Adams scores 10 for USA 🇺🇸🔥 #Concacaf #U17 #USA #YouthFootball
♬ STILL DRE SHILOHS VERSION – SHILOH RODRIGUEZ
"For me, when I'm in a game, my brain kind of shuts off. I don't feel anything, I don't think about anything. I just think, 'Score'. Especially with it being a group stage game, you can't let up. You have to just keep going. At some point in the first half, I was like 'Okay, we're doing something different here', but I think, going into the game, I was hoping to get four or five. I knew that we were a high-quality team."
The U.S. went on to win its final two group stage games, taking down Saint Kitts and Nevis, 7-0, before a comparatively modest 2-0 win over Cuba. Adams added another goal in that Cuba game after sitting out the second group stage match. He finished as the tournament's leading scorer, obviously, with 11 goals.
This wasn't Adam's first big performance for the U.S. on the youth level. He'd previously helped the U15s win the CONCACAF Championship in 2023, scoring a brace in a 4-2 win over Mexico. On that day, the U.S. blitzed Mexico with four goals in the first 37 minutes. It seems to be a theme when Adams is on the field.
Adams, though, is looking to quickly put all of that behind him. He's now totally refocused on the Crew, where he hopes to take his game to a new level.
Columbus CrewHow it's going
For Adams to end up in Columbus, certain things had to happen, and they weren't all ideal at the time. Growing up in nearby Naperville, Adams could have played for the Chicago Fire. He claims they didn't want him, at least not as much as Columbus did. That's why he packed his bags and went down to Ohio alone to live with a host family and chase his professional dreams with the Crew.
"The Crew have a plan for everything," he said. "The biggest thing is that nothing goes without a detailed look and they're always double-checking. If they have to change something, they're quick about it and very clean about it. That has helped set up success. The biggest thing I would say is the standard that we have here is higher than almost every other club: timeliness, communication, the smallest details. Everything is at a high level and that level lets us be the great team that we can be."
Adams originally joined the Crew Academy in January 2023, but signed with Crew 2 at the start of 2024. Later that summer, he was named an MLS NEXT All-Star, captaining the East to a 4-2 win in that match. In the end, he finished the season with a team-leading 10 goals despite starting the season as a 15-year-old.
Adams took another small step forward on Feb. 23, when he was named to the Crew's bench for their MLS season opener, coincidentally against the Fire. He didn't get into the game, but it was certainly a vote of confidence from manager Wilfried Nancy and his staff as Adams pushes for more involvement with the senior team.
Columbus CrewBiggest strengths
We'll start with the obvious: finishing. At every level he's played at so far, Adams has shown a knack for putting the ball into the back of the net. It's a gift, really, although it is one that he's worked hard on. It's also something he's always loved. From those first moments kicking a ball as a kid, Adams has loved the feeling he gets when he's in all alone with a chance to change a game.
"If I were to describe being a striker in one word, I would say 'power'," he says, "because you're the one that controls and decides what happens."
The higher the level, though, the harder it is to maintain that power. As Adams said, it's getting harder and harder to win the game on physical gifts. Now, he has to get creative and he has to be a bit more precise.
Since arriving in Columbus, his big focus has been taking his finishing to another level. He does that by finding different ways to score goals. He provided a glimpse of that in his 10-goal outburst, a game that saw him score those goals in a variety of ways. Headers, volleys, right-foot, left-foot, rebounds, tap-ins… Adams showed a little bit of everything.
"The biggest thing and this is just a mindset change, but it used to be just about smashing it," Adams explains. "Now it's about finding corners and being clean and consistent. I know, with my legs, I'm a strong player and I don't really need to smash it. The biggest thing with me is taking the time to look and find the smallest gaps.
"My favorite finish is right side of goal, across body, smash it to the back post driven. Phil Foden does it really well. That's my favorite finish."