It lasts just a moment, a few seconds at most, but as he sits on the far side of a round table in the lofted lounge of a hotel in a small Belgian city, Tyler Adams looks like any other teenager.



It is easy to forget that Adams is just 19 years old. We have watched him grow over the last two seasons into one of the most important players for Major League Soccer’s Supporters’ Shield winners. On a parallel path, he has matured into a key component for the future of the U.S. men’s national team, a player whose name should be written into the starting XI in permanent marker for years to come.



Adams has navigated every test with a natural confidence, and each accomplishment ratchets up the expectations around him. But as he cracks a grin at an approaching stranger on the day before the U.S. faces Italy in a friendly, Adams looks more like the kid who graduated from high school less than two years ago than one of the U.S. senior team’s central...