Special.

It’s an overused word in elite youth soccer circles. With the hope of finding outstanding talent at the forefront of most minds, it stands to reason that observers of all types are too quick to attach the term to budding young talents. After all, a player can be quite good and not really be special.

A great kid.

Also an overused phrase. An ability to act nice for a few minutes in front of select adults does not make a young person “great.” In our day of multiple and chronic family stresses, producing “great kids” is a pretty difficult task. Most of us are more than happy with “pretty good” – and of course, a kid being “great” isn’t based so much on what we think of our own, but what everybody else thinks of them.

Qualifiers aside, there is a young man in the Dallas area who is frequently being labeled a “special” talent and “a great kid” by multiple observers. Let me introduce to you 12-year old Emerson Hyndman.

Yes, he’s only 12, and we don’t usually write about 12-year old players. We do cover U13 club teams but not as much as their older counterparts. There have been a few players over the years who have had their age questioned quite a bit by onlookers, but we tend to not get into that (it usually comes out in the end, is our take).

First of all, NOBODY questions Emerson’s age. Last summer at the U14 Boys National Team camp, Emerson, a 1996 birth year player, was out there with his 1994 counterparts and, with some of the group having hit puberty and some it having not, “Emo” was pretty much the smallest boy out of 120-plus players at the Concord, Massachusetts camp.

At Thanksgiving he was with the U.S. Youth Soccer Region III ODP team at the Interregional, and while he again was among the smallest of the group, he was even more demonstratively showing he belong with the group, winning balls, hitting killer through passes and generally stamping his mark on the match as an experienced midfield general would. He was 11 at the time and more than making up for lack of size with especially good technique, allowing him to drive long and medium paces with authority and precision.

Now the pros are calling. Emerson’s father Tony marvels at the amount of interest his son is already getting from European clubs. While Tony and Becky Hyndman are in no rush to see their only child leave home, they are coming to realize they truly do have a special situation on their hands.

“Becky and I agree that the best path for him is for him not to worry about it,” Tony Hyndman told TopDrawerSoccer ®.  If he’s going to be a pro soccer player then he’ll work on the best way to go down that path. The Academy league and stuff like that is all great. We just don’t know if it we’ll be soon enough for him. Getting this attention from overseas has been an eye-opener.”

With European Union passport eligibility due to his grandfather (SMU head coach Schellas Hyndman)’s Portugese heritage, Emerson has the paperwork options covered, but its his on-field ability which already has been grabbing the attention of coaches and scouts.

His Dallas Texans club coach Marcio Leite has worked with some of the club’s top products over the years, and he sees a number of similarities.

“He’s right there with all the good players we’ve had in the past,” Leite said. “With a player like him you don’t want to put him in too much structure. You give him some freedom. Of course you show him some pointers, maybe something he can do if they are marking him too hard, but we just let him use his natural ability.

“He has a tremendous change of pace,” Leite continued. “He has that special ability to set you up. He slows and the defender thinks he’s gonna get him, and then he just changes gears and beats the guy. He understands the game very well and he’s very technical. The  only thing that is going to come with time is power. He already has the special ability to make the penetrating pass and find the open player. He has the ability to dribble past you, to shield the ball. He’s very good at away from defenders away from the ball and turning with the ball. And he’s only 12. Just wait!”

Emo says in large part, these skills came through hours of work either on his own or with Tony.

“I work a lot with my dad. We just work on skills, on things like different ways to strike the ball, different techniques of hitting the ball,” he said. “I’ve done it since I was like 5. I probably practice with him 4 or 5 days a week.”

Tony Hyndman said along with the personal training, which becomes family time for the 2 boys and Becky (Emo says he is working on Becky’s skills), Emo has shown a propensity for working with the ball on his own, almost nightly in the family dining room.

“I like to act like I’m in some situation and try to make something out of it,” he said. “I create my own moves and do some juggling. I do some work on the ball and create a new move. Sometimes I’ll try to use it in a game.”

Becky interjects at this that the family dining room does not include a table, and that the use of foam balls is required inside. Still, she is enthusiastic about the family’s lifestyle, built as it is around elite soccer.

“We’re such a tight family we like to do everything together anyway,” she said. “It would be very boring really, without soccer.”

Tony Hyndman, whose playing career was short-circuited by a serious back injury, said that along with the family time, the personal training emphasizes the priority of skill development, which he said tend to be neglected in the American club landscape.

“The basis for everything ahead is to develop skill at a young age,” he said. “There are  so many kids bigger and faster who just get by with size and speed, but it doesn’t take long until they are 14 or 15, and the technical players, the ones we hope to see later, have caught up. The problem is I think we lose a lot of those kids because they get discouraged with what goes on. Coaches spend all their time trying to win games and keep those big players around, they don’t really train, they just keep running and running. So the small players are not as effective (in that style) and they lose interest or whatever.”

As with most top players, Emo and his family watch a lot of matches together. He lists Man United as a favorite club and Barcelona’s Argentine winger Lionel Messi as a favorite player.

Tony Hyndman said the twotalk about tactics, sometimes with grandfather Schellas using salt and pepper shakers at the dinner table to make diagrams. He added that preparing Emerson for playing at a higher level wasn’t too complicated.

“We talk about playing the ball quickly, to take chances when you have them, to play the game as it comes to you,” Tony said. “You don’t give a set of directions, but he knows when he’s playing older, stronger and bigger kids that he won’t have the same amount of time on the ball. He learns on his own to play 1 and 2 touch and how to solve problems. We’re just fortunate that Gary Williamson (North Texas ODP Director of Coaching) was willing to give him the opportunity to perform. Same with the regional coaches.”

Fortunate or not, it’s clear that Emerson is working very hard to make his own luck, and this diligence is helping convince many in the know that he truly is a special talent with a very bright future.