Scouting Chase Adams: Rising Columbus Crew and USMNT star is out to prove he's more than his viral 10-goal breakout, 'Baby Haaland' nickname

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

Just 16, Adams still has so much to work on. It's easy to see the foundations, and the goals make those foundations look even stronger, but Adams knows it more than anyone: he's not a finished product.

"Technically, soccer-wise, the biggest thing for me now is just a clean ability to execute technically," he says. "It's cleaning up a touch. It's a ball being played in, controlling it and then laying it off or, obviously, finishing. I've gotten pretty good at it."

The biggest thing for Adams, though, is the mental side. It's something that the Crew focus on heavily, and it's not just on the field. Adams continues to attend virtual high school classes, even as he inches closer to a professional breakout. The goal is to both challenge players and help them in the moments where things do get a little bit difficult.

"I think the biggest thing that makes Wilfried such a great coach is that he understands that the technical side of the game will come," Adams says. "The biggest thing you can do, and his biggest focus, is on the mental side and making sure you're okay mentally and focused purely on the game. The biggest thing that I worked on when I first got here was learning how to just focus on soccer and perform at my best.

"They want everyone here to have the mental side down and, then, if you need something, you can reach out and the club really helps."

Many players would be overwhelmed by the Erling Haaland comparison, but this one at least has a little thought. Adams wasn't nicknamed 'Baby Haaland' on a whim; it was because he matched one of his idol's earliest achievements.

Back in 2019, Haaland announced himself to the world with a nine-goal outburst against Honduras at the U20 World Cup. For many, it was the first they'd seen of the superstar Norwegian striker. We all know what happened next. Just a few years later, Haaland was arguably the world's best striker. He never looked back.

Adams has a long way to go to get there. Reaching Haaland's level will be nearly impossible. For now, though, he's enjoying the comparison.

"I think it's about knowing that I'm Chase Adams and he's Erling Halaand.," he said. "That's the easiest thing I can do. He didn't play for the Columbus Crew. He's from Norway. There are so many major differences. But, as a kid, and I am still a kid, it's hard not to be like, 'Damn, that's sick'. He's my idol, and I'm being compared to him.

"It's not that it doesn't matter to me. I really love it, but it's not going to change or affect anything that happens to me."

What has also helped is that Adams has had two incredible role models close by, even if both have since left. He learned a lot by watching Cucho Hernandez dominate MLS before his big-money move to Real Betis. He learned even more from his place under the wing of Christian Ramirez, whose winding path has taken him from the lower leagues all the way to a long MLS career.

"Christian, he was my mentor," Adams said. "I think last year, about a year and a half ago, he was getting his coaching license, and he decided to help me one-on-one. He still has remained as that role model. He texted me and he's like, 'If you ever need anything, just let me know'. Even though he's in LA [with the Galaxy], he's still willing to help me. He's a great guy. I wish the best for him always, because he helped me with my journey. He's given me advice.

"I think seeing his career of being in MLS, I would say almost an MLS legend, he's getting right there, I'd say with, I think, 10 years now in the MLS, scoring countless goals, very important goals, helping the Crew win a championship. I think that that is a career that I would love to have, and he deserves all of it."

Adams' mindset hasn't changed much since he was a kid. Even as he inches closer to the professional level, he still heads into each game with the exact same mindset.

"I set my yearly goals, like a certain amount of goals in a year, but going into each game, my goal is simple: score goals and see what happens after," he says. "I don't worry about what happens in the game, what happens before or what happens after. Just score the goals now and worry about everything else later."

Still, it's hard not to feel how close he's gotten. There are big things on the horizon. The U17 World Cup later this fall is one, of course, and, by then, things could change even more than they have already. Adams is inching closer to a first-team debut. It's hard not to feel excited about that.

"I think my goal for this year would be probably to try to break into the first team a little bit, maybe get a few minutes in a few games," he says. "I also want to prove that I am one of the best players in MLS Next Pro and show that ability that I have. Then at the end of the year, with the national team, I really want to show the world that I'm one of the best U17 strikers out there now."

If he can do any of those things, everything else will fall into place. His life has changed quickly thanks to his big breakout game, but that was just one game. Yes, 10 goals, but one game. There are so many more to be played and, hopefully, plenty of goals to score.

Maybe someday Haaland will hear about him. Maybe someday Adams can build on his own youth national team explosion and find himself playing at the highest of levels. He's already had his first moment in the spotlight and, with that one behind him, he can now chase down even more.

He's far from his childhood youth league. There's no kicking Adams out now, even as his goal numbers continue to rise.