\t\t\t\t\tOverview:<\/p>\n
Sometimes, children playing recreational soccer in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association can wind up representing the United States internationally a decade later.<\/p>\n
Richmondtown Rampage photo. Adri is circled, coach Joey Caruana Jr. is on the left and coach Anthony Cosenza is on the right. (Photo courtesy of Joey Caruana Jr.)<\/p>\n
From Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association<\/p>\n
Sometimes, children playing recreational soccer in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association can wind up representing the United States internationally a decade later.<\/p>\n
Case in point:<\/p>\n
Staten Island\u2019s Adri Mehmeti, who is 17 years old and plays for the New York Red Bulls.<\/p>\n
Mehmeti started playing soccer when he was two years old. His first team was a recreational side, the Richmondtown Rampage of the Staten Island Youth Soccer League (SIYSL). He played in Richmondtown for two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdri was really, really talented and hard working. He was great, a real sweetheart who stood out from the rest of the players,\u201d Richmondtown coach Joey Caruana Jr. said. \u201cHis father Vani is very passionate about the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vani Mehmeti grew up in Albania and played for a semipro team in Greece before emigrating to the U.S., where he played for New York Albanians in 2007-08, Kofrabi for 5 1\/2 years and then FC Ulqini, all in the Cosmopolitan Soccer League.<\/p>\n
Adri also played for the SIYSL\u2019s Staten Island United, then for Red Bulls Academy. Vani scheduled night shifts for the trucking company he owns so that he could drive him to Red Bulls\u2019 practices in New Jersey in the afternoon. As Adri continued to develop, he played for the Boys Under-15 U.S. national youth teams for the U.S. and Albania.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying for Albania there, he scored a goal with nearly 100 of our relatives watching,\u201d Vani said, according to ENYYSA.<\/p>\n
Adri made his professional debut as a 16-year-old with the Red Bulls and the midfielder is now a fixture in their starting line-up at age 17.<\/p>\n
He came on as a second-half substitute, replacing another Eastern New York product, Tyler Adams, for the U.S. men\u2019s national team in its 4-1 win over Peru in Orlando, Fla. on Sept. 26.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot put into words how great it is that Adri is playing for the U.S. men\u2019s national team. It\u2019s a dream come true,\u201d Vani said. \u201cI met my wife, Adri\u2019s mother, here, he was born here and developed here. We have become successful in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the recently completed international window, Adri played in three games, coming in as a sub against Peru and Canada and starting against Chile. The Americans won all four matches in the FIFA international window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overview: Sometimes, children playing recreational soccer in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association can wind up representing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[60182,131219,50597,50598,136235,9,24,4505,63,136236,76213,134,136,135,136237,76214,9028,9030,136238],"class_list":["post-368942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-adri-mehmeti","tag-cosmopolitan-soccer-league","tag-eastern-new-york-youth-soccer-association","tag-enyysa","tag-joey-caruana-jr","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-red-bulls","tag-nyc","tag-richmondtown-rampage","tag-siysl","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-staten-island-united","tag-staten-island-youth-soccer-league","tag-u-s-mens-national-team","tag-usmnt","tag-vani-mehmeti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}