Well before Derrick Etienne Jr. donned his first New York Red Bulls jersey, and many years before he celebrated his first goal for Haiti, his father, Derrick Etienne Sr., had an inkling that his son was going to be a special soccer player.



It was the summer of 2004, and the 7-year-old Derrick Etienne Jr. was playing for the NASA United Futbol Club Under-8 team in Paterson, N.J. The youngster flicked the ball in the air, juggled it three times over a defender’s head, and volleyed it into the net.



Whoa! The proud father recalls thinking. At seven years old, who has the imagination to do that?



“Of course, you don’t want to anoint someone the new professional player at seven years old because you don’t know what his development will entail,” Etienne Sr. told The Athletic. But I knew there was something special there.”



Special enough that, in December 2015, 19-year-old Derrick Jr. left the University of Virginia after...