Sports brings people together.
Remember this image from my Panoptica article last week?
It's still rising.
And a huge reason it's rising isn't only because events like the World Cup bring people from across continents together. It's that on a far more micro level, they help people connect across generations.
If you haven't heard it yet, the story of Alex Freeman, the 21-year-old defensive star of the US team, has an epic cross-generational unification angle to it.
In the US team's opening match in Seattle against Australia, Freeman, in a rare attacking position, headed a deflected shot into the opposition's goal. The stadium exploded and then quieted in record time. A flag was up. Freeman was offside. The heads went down. The shoulders sunk. The play, as is standard process, went to VAR for review.
A moment later, the ref reversed the call, the goal was confirmed, and we watched the team chase Alex across the field before piling on him in an act of joy that only sport can produce.
It wasn't the first time somebody in Alex's family had a moment on that ground.
NFL All-Pro and Super Bowl winner Antonio Freeman is Alex's dad.
We all know the stories and the pressure of following in a successful parent's footsteps. We all know, even if we weren't there, a small part of Antonio was hoping his son would share some portion of his experience in his own adult journey. And we all know what that weight might feel like on the next generation when they encounter just how big the older generation lived.
Young Alex grew up playing lots of sports, but the one that stuck was the other football. Antonio got it. In an act of parental awareness we all should admire, he told his son to find his own way, and that he had his back.
In 2021, Alex was on the ascent, helping Orlando City's U-17s win the MLS NEXT Cup and drawing pro-level attention as a teenager. The groundwork was being laid.
But it hadn't been a straight line to get there. As a member of Inter Miami's youth academy, he'd been cut from the squad, 15 years old and out of the system. He was approached by Orlando City's residential program, where he found a new home. In 2022, Orlando signed him as a homegrown player to the MLS team.
It still wasn't easy. He was a teenager in a pro environment, grinding through reserve and youth competitions, racking up appearances most fans never saw. Through the end of the 2024 season, he had logged just 10 minutes of MLS action. 10. 600 seconds. Can you imagine being a pro, telling people you're a pro, but really only being a pro benchwarmer? Now put that into your head as a 20-year-old. This is hard.
Even off the main stage, he practiced. He was working on his skills, refining a hybrid attacking-fullback role that was quickly becoming part of the modern game. So when the opportunity to play more minutes in the new season came, he snapped into place for Orlando.
Alex was an immediate starter, a year ago, and a great one. Three goals and an assist in his first ten league games. A breakout campaign that put him into the conversation as one of the best young players in MLS. After a call-up to a national team camp, the staff encouraged him to think bigger, including when Spanish club Villarreal came calling with an offer that could climb to over $7 million with incentives, plus a sell-on clause for Orlando.
All of those years of waiting, and overnight, it all changes.
Before that first US World Cup game in Seattle, he had made 19 appearances in an American jersey. The staff loved him and his work ethic. Despite his newness, they saw him as the ideal hybrid defender who could help lead defense and attack from the back at the world's biggest tournament.
His dad has been behind him the whole way.
Almost thirty years earlier, in that same building, then called the Kingdome, Antonio had a night to remember: two touchdowns for the Packers in a 31-10 win over the Seahawks, on his way to a 933-yard season. The Kingdome came down in 2000. Lumen Field went up on the same ground. And on the eve of Father's Day weekend, the son scored on it too.
(First tissue break, go ahead, hydrated eyes are part of this)
When Antonio watched Alex do it, in a different sport, in front of a different audience, he made a comment about how he only knew what it felt like for Green Bay to have his back. Seeing the entire country have his son's? "Cloud nine? I don't think there's a number for what cloud I'm on."
(Second eye-hydration break, go ahead, take a moment)
Don’t dry all the tears yet, because if you haven't seen the clip Fox put together, you need to take a minute and watch it.
(We’re almost done, fight through it and read the last few lines)
We don't just have moments of transcontinental togetherness at a World Cup.
We have moments of transgenerational togetherness, too.
Celebrate all of them.
