Alex Freeman's Meteoric Rise to USMNT, 2026 World Cup Anchored In Resolve
"The chances of your child actually making a World Cup roster, that’s lotto ticket and lightning all on the same day."
ALEX FREEMAN’S JOURNEY to the 2026 FIFA World Cup is a whirlwind.
A year ago, Freeman ascended from academy prospect to one of Major League Soccer’s best players, breaking into Orlando City SC’s starting XI at right back. Last June, the United States men’s national team called him up for the first time — a USMNT teammate quipped that he’d never even heard of Alex before. Less than six months ago, La Liga’s Villarreal CF acquired him in the winter transfer window, then qualified for Champions League.
Now, Freeman, 21, is set to represent his country in a World Cup on home soil. If his career continues on its current trajectory, perhaps everyone will know his name by the end of summer.
“The main thing is to take your opportunities,” Freeman told GOAL’s Ryan Tolmich in February. “You never know when you'll have one again.”
Three days before his World Cup debut, his mother and stepfather, Rochelle and Jake Hinkle, are being gracious with their morning, recounting Alex’s path before flying from Florida to Los Angeles for the USMNT’s opening match against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium on Friday night.
There’s no doubt that things have accelerated beyond comprehension.
“It does sometimes feel like I’m watching a movie and there’s people playing me and Alex and the rest of my family and everyone who’s been along this journey,” Rochelle says. “But also, a part of me has seen the hard work and the dedication — all the long rides, all the trips, missing prom, or missing high school things, and just sacrificing for his dream.”
FROM ATHLETE TO SOCCER PLAYER
THE HINKLES’ SOUTH Florida home in Plantation has caught the bug that so many Americans have over the past decade or so. Soccer is a family-wide obsession. “We watch soccer, upon soccer, upon soccer,” says Rochelle, a Liverpool fan, “in this house.”
So the significance of Freeman joining Villarreal in late January is not lost back home. Rochelle even attended the May 2 match against Levante when Villarreal clinched a Champions League spot for next season. Freeman started at right back, delivering one of his best performances since joining El Submarino Amarillo.
“The level of play is a lot higher,” Rochelle says. “You can tell by the speed of the ball, the technicality of how they play, you have to make quick decisions. That’s what Alex kept saying to me, ‘Mom, these guys play very quick. You just have to make quick decisions and be more communicative — but, in Spanish!’”
Per The Athletic’s Tom Bogert, Villarreal’s approaches for Freeman during the MLS season were rebuffed, before finally landing on a $4 million fee (which could potentially rise to more than $7 million). He’s played in nine matches (three starts) for Villarreal, whose home stadium, Estadio de la Cerámica, holds a capacity of 21,332. He was competing on of makeshift pitches inside baseball stadiums in front of 15 people not too long ago.
“It’s like he jumped onto a different train track,” Jake says. “And it hasn’t stopped yet.”
Jake, a Manchester United fan, was Freeman’s first-ever soccer coach, serving as a volunteer down in Tamarac, Florida. Not many kids could keep up with Freeman, who grew up playing central striker and right winger, in local rec leagues. Teammates gravitated to him and their parents would tell Jake that if Freeman wasn’t around, they didn’t feel like they had a chance. It’s not too surprising; watching interviews today, Freeman’s confidence is infectious and unmistakable.
Back when Freeman was 7 years old, Jake was connected with Roger Thomas, a former Jamaican national team midfielder overseeing a youth soccer system in Parkland, Florida. A step up in competition, Freeman played travel ball with Thomas, while also playing travel basketball, for a couple years. He did all of this, while also competing in other sports, like baseball and tennis.
“It was chaos,” Rochelle says, her past exhaustion palpable.
Freeman seemed gifted at every sport. Plenty of that is credited to his genes — his father, Antonio, is a one-time Super Bowl champion who played nine seasons as an NFL receiver and led the league in receiving in 1998.
“It didn’t matter,” Antonio says, laughing. “Footballs, basketballs, baseballs — he kicked it up against my furniture, and it drove me crazy. Everywhere we went, no matter what, he was kicking stuff.” American football, despite Antonio’s success, was never on Alex’s radar.
By the time Alex turned 12, soccer became his singular focus. He was invited to try out for Weston FC, one of the nation’s largest youth soccer academies, located just 20 minutes outside of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Club alumni include Alejandro Bedoya, Aidan Morris, and Martha Thomas.)
Alex made the team, but at the first practice, was informed he would be an alternate, meaning he couldn’t play in the team’s first six games. Alex didn’t let it deter him. He saw the level of other Weston cadets and wanted to do what was needed to catch up.
He trained hard with Mirco Gubellini, a former Italian soccer player who became director of coaching at Weston in 2015. Rochelle and Jake credit him for being “the initial match” to light Alex’s “whole fire for soccer.”
“He took him from an athlete,” Jake says, “to a soccer player.”
Alex gradually earned more and more minutes. He wasn’t necessarily a standout on the team, but Weston FC invited him back the following year. Once again, he was named an alternate instead of a regular starter. But Alex kept pushing. After sitting a few times, he started the first match he was eligible for and established himself as a key player, showing a knack for making winning plays throughout the season. Alongside Noah Allen, he helped lead Weston FC to the Development Academy playoffs in California.
Momentum felt real.
THE TRYOUT
SOCCER ICON DAVID Beckham finally launched his MLS expansion club, Inter Miami CF, less than a half-hour away from Alex Freeman’s hometown of Plantation, Florida. It was the summer of 2019, and Freeman was flying off his second season with Weston. Inter planned to hold academy tryouts ahead of the club’s inaugural MLS campaign.
But Freeman didn’t get to put his best foot forward. During tryouts, Inter Miami coaches deployed him at central midfield instead of his natural positions of striker and right winger.
Inter Miami selected a handful of Weston FC players, but not Alex. Momentum felt as though it had screeched to a halt.
Even Antonio recalls that Alex was “devastated” after getting denied. “That’s what he wanted,” Antonio says. “And, as a parent, I didn’t know what to tell him, except there’ll be another opportunity.”
Rochelle remembers Alex being unhappy about the decision, but says it didn’t break his spirit.
“I feel like that was a thorn in Alex’s side,” Rochelle says. “He just saw it as another barrier that he was willing to break down. You put a door in front of him, he’s like, ‘Alright, fine. I’m just gonna break this one down, too. You’re not gonna keep me back.’”
Back with Weston, along with a few other players whom Inter Miami rejected, Alex would get some immediate revenge. The two academy squads faced head-to-head. Weston won. “Needless to say,” Jake recalls, grinning, “it was exciting for the parents.”
Then the world, and Weston’s season, paused as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The next step for Alex, however, was quickly approaching.
THE MOVE
JAVIER CARRILLO HAS always had a good eye for talent. Orlando City even created a brand-new role for him last year, Head of Player Development, after helping 13 academy products graduate to the men’s first team since joining the club’s staff in 2019.
Carrillo, a Lima, Peru, native who once played midfield at Florida Atlantic University, first heard about Freeman as a member of Weston FC’s U12s. Freeman was one of the academy’s kids flashing legitimate potential.
When cross-state rival Inter Miami passed on Freeman during tryouts years later, Carrillo, then Orlando’s assistant academy director and U17 head coach, was surprised. He was already luring another Weston product, goalkeeper Isaac Delgado, when Delgado’s father reached out to Jake. Would you consider sending Alex to Orlando? That led to a conversation with Carrillo, who pitched the idea of Freeman joining Orlando City’s academy — on one condition.
Carrillo wanted Freeman, who’d grown up idolizing Lionel Messi, to convert from an attacker to right back. Even before Freeman sprouted into the 6-foot-2, 174-pound man he is today, his combination of speed, size, willingness to crash the box, and smooth dribbling screamed outrageous potential.
“It was exciting, because of his physicality,” Carrillo says. “He was always going forward and creating chances, and [had] good finesse touch.”
Ultimately, convincing Freeman to give up being a focal part of the attack didn’t prove too challenging. Convincing Rochelle to let her 15-year-old son leave Plantation to live three hours away in Orlando with a host family, at the height of a global pandemic, was understandably a bit more difficult.
“I wasn’t done mothering him,” Rochelle says. “And for us to live in two locations for soccer seemed weird at the time, because we’d never been through this process — we didn’t know anyone who had — and it was all new to us. So him moving gave me a lot of discomfort.”
Freeman really wanted to make the move and pushed for it. Jake did his best to convince and woo Rochelle into letting him go. But the key to making it happen was Suzanne VanMarter, whose son initially played the same position as Freeman. She put Rochelle’s nerves at ease and willingly hosted Freeman during his time with Orlando.
“If she wasn’t there,” Jake says of VanMarter, “it probably wouldn’t have happened.”
Once everyone was on board, Freeman says he had a reckoning. If he put his mind to it, he realized, he had immense potential as a right back. Carrillo’s system emphasized rotating the ball, getting him up the pitch as an extra attacker, utilizing his goal-scoring and creativity. Suddenly, legendary defenders Cafu and Dani Alves became his new idols alongside Messi, inspiring his development into a versatile modern fullback who could attack and defend.
“I’m so happy that he listened,” Carrillo says. “Not only did he listen, he embraced it, right? He tried to work on it, he tried to understand the position, understand what we were asking from him, and the rest is history.”
Orlando City’s U17s won the MLS Next Cup in 2021. Freeman played a crucial role, scoring eight goals and adding 15 assists across 30 appearances. He describes that championship run as what’s shaped him into the player he is today.
“The combination of focusing a lot of their play on him and then winning the first MLS Next Cup at the U17s,” Jake says, “was probably the light bulb moment where you think, ‘OK… there is something more unique going on.’”
THE DEAL & THE BREAKTHROUGH
AS ALEX FREEMAN captured the MLS Next Cup, Rochelle undertook setting the table for him to go to college.
“I was making sure his grades were good,” she laughs, “getting his transcripts together, sending videos to different colleges because for soccer, you have to recruit for yourself.”
Freeman signed a letter of intent with the University of Louisville. “I was getting ready to do the Kentucky Derby, getting my hat for Mother’s Day,” Rochelle recalls. But before she could take a step towards Churchill Downs, Freeman had a message.
Orlando wants to talk to you guys.
Orlando wanted to make a deal. A few agents had suggested that Freeman should consider signing it, while Rochelle pondered the college-to-MLS path.
But Orlando displayed strong conviction for Freeman, offering what Jake says was a guaranteed four-year homegrown contract, which included a fifth-year club option. The rationale for Freeman signing made even more sense when considering that, in the worst-case scenario, he would have been 21 when his contract ran out, allowing him to go to college at a young age.
“No one has a crystal ball,” Rochelle says. “Do I believe in him? Of course, and I still do. He’s an amazing, hard worker. Every door that’s been put in front of him, every barrier, he’s been able to break down. But it is about being patient. None of this has happened overnight. It’s been a long journey. A lot of ups and downs.”
A mother’s intuition is rarely wrong. Freeman spent three seasons with Orlando City B, the club’s reserve team, making only three MLS appearances for a combined 11 minutes. On April 29, 2023, he made his MLS first-team debut in the 93rd minute against LA Galaxy.
As Jake says, though, not everyone can be a teenage superstar, like Lamine Yamal. “At the end of the day,” he remarks, “maybe those three seasons at MLS 2 gave him the ability to really hone in defensively and learn what he needed to learn there. I think his was just what he needed to get him where he’s at.”
It required plenty of patience, but Freeman finally broke into the first team in 2025. In the second match of the season, he earned his first-career start against Toronto FC. The day of the match, without letting Jake and Rochelle know, he sent out a text: Don’t be late. They were in the stadium well before he got in behind the Toronto defense and laced his first-career MLS goal.
That evening, the floodgates which seemed stuck for so long as Freeman climbed the ranks of the reserves, finally opened.
“It just seems,” Jake says, “like that fever pitch that that created that night, it hasn’t stopped.”
Freeman played 29 matches (26 starts) in 2025 for Orlando City, registering six goals and three assists. He was named an MLS All-Star, Young Player of the Year, and featured in the 2025 MLS Best XI.
Midway through the MLS season, Mauricio Pochettino and the USMNT called Freeman up for his first cap in a friendly against Türkiye. Throughout his career, Poch has a decent track record, at least at club level, when handing young defenders cracks at the starting XI. He kept Freeman up for the U.S.’ CONCACAF Gold Cup run and started him in the final against Mexico.
“Alex is player with little experience,” Pochettino said during the tournament. “But in soccer, the desire, the capacity and the talent usually rise above experience.”
Pochettino has kept Freeman in the fold. In a November friendly against Uruguay, he scored twice. First, heading in off a corner. Later, he danced through the Uruguayan defense before firing from inside the penalty area for his brace.
A few months after the MLS season, Orlando City sold him for a club-record homegrown fee to Villarreal, who play domestically against Spanish giants Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atlético Madrid. After finishing the 2025-26 campaign third in La Liga, Villarreal will compete in Champions League against some of the best clubs across Europe next season.
“Alex is getting to play against people that he watched growing up,” Rochelle exclaims. “Which is insane!”
All of that has led Freeman to SoFi Stadium, where he will make his World Cup debut. When the USMNT officially selected him as its youngest member this cycle, he called Carrillo. “Obviously,” Freeman tells him, “this journey couldn’t have started if it wasn’t for you.”
“I’m super happy for him,” Carrillo says. “For him to experience this, a World Cup in his country, if you ask him two years ago, he would be like, ‘You’re crazy!’ That’s the amazing thing about this. You never know what can happen because things change so fast. I think he’s gonna do great.”
Freeman seems willing to take
“I feel like for a player of my caliber that’s an up-and-coming guy who’s just trying to prove himself, I feel like you’re gonna have pressure on you no matter what,” Freeman says. “It’s about how you handle the pressure and what you can do with it and how you can put it to your advantage.”
Only 26 Americans — including six players who were not born in the U.S. — get the opportunity to represent their country on The Beautiful Game’s biggest stage. The rarity of this moment, which seemed even more unlikely over a year ago, is awe-inspiring for Freeman’s parents.
“The chances of your child actually making a World Cup roster, that’s lotto ticket and lightning all on the same day,” Jake says. “I think being there Friday will be unbelievable.”
“There are not a lot of words that I can use to articulate how I actually feel about this,” Rochelle says. “Sometimes, when you start to talk about it, you get so overwhelmed, and yeah… we’re just super excited and proud of our son.”