'What am I, a ghost?': the forgotten trio of high schoolers who beat Cavan Sullivan to USMNT history

If 16-year-old Cavan Sullivan takes the field for the US men's national team in the coming days, he will join a list of youngest-ever US players stacked with recognizable names. At the top sits onetime phenom-turned-cautionary-tale Freddy Adu, still the youngest player ever to appear for the US men. Names in the top 20 like Eddie Gaven and Bobby Convey will feel familiar to longtime fans, while Christian Pulisic, Yunus Musah and Gio Reyna are all still in the picture – and may well prove to be Sullivan's future partners in attack.

But just below Adu's name and above those five sits a trio unknown to the vast majority of US fans: Mike Slivinski, Mark Jonas and Nelson Vargas. All three made their debut in a 1991 friendly against Jamaica, with Slivinski and Jonas both younger than Sullivan will be should he appear this window. Only Vargas was ever capped again, adding three more appearances between 1991 and 1994.

Call-up nobody remembered

The idea of a 16-year-old representing the US at senior level has been mainstreamed now, but it was unheard of in the early 1990s – long before US Soccer pumped millions into youth development and talent identification. So much so that when Sullivan received his call-up last week, nobody seemed to remember the three players who, more than three decades ago, carved their names into the record books.

"A buddy of mine sent me an article about [Cavan's call-up], and it said he'd be the second-youngest player in US history," says Slivinski, breaking into laughter. "What am I, a fucking ghost? I don't think it was a dream, I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine the one game I played."

Milutinovic's miracle-hunting

When Bora Milutinovic took the US job in 1991, he inherited a program at its most pivotal moment. A year earlier, the US had appeared in their first World Cup in four decades, and in three years the country would host the tournament for the first time – making a decent showing on home soil imperative.

Milutinovic took a long, wandering path to the USMNT, with stops as a player or coach in a dozen or so different countries. He led Mexico at the 1986 World Cup and Costa Rica in 1990, guiding both to then-best-ever finishes. His reputation as a miracle worker – a specialist extracting results from underperforming teams – was a perfect fit for a US side that lacked little in grit but missed the quality to compete with the world's best. In short order, he set out on a talent-identification journey unprecedented at the time, calling hundreds of players into camps and handing nearly 50 of them their first caps in three years at the helm.

In August 1991, that scouting journey took him to the U-17 World Cup in Italy, where an unheralded group of US youngsters bossed an Italy squad featuring Alessandro Del Piero and an Argentina team led by Marcelo Gallardo and Juan Sebastián Verón. The US fell to eventual champions Ghana in the semi-finals, but several players left their mark on Milutinovic and his staff.

Three very different paths

Among those scouted was Slivinski, who grew up in a trailer park in St Charles, Missouri, across the river from St Louis. Long before the era of MLS Next Pro or elite youth travel teams, he honed his skills at his local high school, eventually earning a look from US Soccer. "Those Italy players from that U-17 World Cup left and went back to training with Fiorentina," Slivinski says, laughing. "I left that tournament and went right back to training with Francis Howell North [high school]."

His midfield partner, Vargas, also caught Milutinovic's eye. Vargas's journey in some ways mirrors that of US legend Clint Dempsey, whose skillset and mentality was tempered in the Mexican men's leagues of his home town. Raised by a Colombian father, Vargas was featuring in Miami's highly competitive Sunday leagues at 13, often lining up against ex-professionals twice his age and size. "If you're good enough," Vargas says now, "you're old enough."

Like Slivinski, Jonas was 16 and played for his high school team, but his profile was boosted by an elite club side in Maryland – a hotbed that produced several members of the 1990 World Cup squad. Jonas was part of the federation's Olympic Developmental Program, at the time the only true pathway for a youth player to stay on the senior national team's radar.

The Jamaica friendly, 14 September 1991

The three arrived in North Carolina three days before the USMNT's 14 September friendly against Jamaica and joined a mix of newcomers and regulars, including US staples such as Paul Caligiuri, Fernando Clavijo and Hugo Pérez. "Just being around some of the guys from the full team, it was incredible," Jonas says. "Chris Henderson was there. I remember Clavijo left a huge impression on me, he was a very hard-nosed player. It was crazy to see how everything translated; I was a kid and that was the first time I had ever played against full-grown men, the speed of everything."

"Time and space," Vargas adds, "becomes a lot harder to manage with grown men, if you're not used to it. Everything happens a lot faster."

There is no video of the match – most US friendlies weren't widely broadcast – and none of the three even has a photo from their time with the senior team. But by most accounts Slivinski, handed a surprise start, acquitted himself well. The US took a first-half lead through indoor and outdoor journeyman Sadri Gjonbalaj. Slivinski then drew a foul about 25 yards from goal and came very close to converting the ensuing free kick, before a breakaway and a shot across the face of goal once again challenged Jamaica's keeper. "This experience is indescribable," Slivinski told the local paper after the match. "It's just a massive honor. I am thrilled, nervous and a little speechless, honestly."

Vargas and Jonas entered in the second half, doing enough to draw praise from Caligiuri and Milutinovic. The occasion, though, seemed entirely lost on the press. Soccer-specific publications like Soccer America noted that Slivinski had become the youngest-ever US men's player (Mia Hamm debuted for the women at 15 in 1987), but newspapers never mentioned it.

"If it would have happened today, it would have been a big deal," says Vargas. "But soccer in the US just wasn't what it is now, at all, there was no social media or coverage back then. But that is what it is."

Dreams derailed

The attention wasn't the only thing that eluded the trio. "I kept my jersey on after the match, I wore it back to the hotel soaking wet," says Slivinski. "Thinking maybe they'd let me keep it. But that shows you how different a time it was – [US Soccer] probably didn't have the money to do that."

All three dreamed of future call-ups, of maybe even making the 1994 World Cup squad. For Slivinski and Jonas, those dreams proved fruitless. Injuries derailed Slivinski's national team ambitions, though he went on to win an NCAA championship at the University of Virginia and MLS Cup with DC United before retiring in 2000. "Injuries, I guess, did me in," he says. "But I also didn't try hard enough, I don't think. Mentally, I just wasn't there." Jonas, too, faced frustrations: in 1992 he departed for North Carolina State on an athletic scholarship, but quickly found himself with a college coach hesitant to release him to attend youth national team commitments. Only Vargas earned further caps, adding three between 1991 and 1994.

Now, as Sullivan stands on the brink of joining the youngest-ever list, the trio's names have resurfaced – more than three decades after three high schoolers quietly made history that almost nobody noticed.