AMERICAN boy-wonder Freddy Adu was mooted as the 'next Pele' and appeared in lucrative US TV ads with the Brazilian legend when he was just 17 — but he ended up sucking.

Adu, now 26, signed a contract at 14-YEARS-OLD for MLS outfit DC United, becoming the youngest professional athlete in the history of the United States.

After some precocious displays, hype surrounding Adu reached fever pitch when the prodigy appeared in a sports drink advert with Pele in which comparisons were drawn between the two.

And when the Ghanain-born winger became the youngest scorer in MLS history, he was called up by the national team to face Argentina — and a certain 18-year-old Lionel Messi — in the 2005 Fifa World Youth Championships.

Billed as the battle of two wonderkids of their generation, Adu was remarkably considered superior to the Barca youngling despite only being 16.

But twelve years after America's 1-0 win, the difference between the two players could not be more stark.

Whereas Messi went on to break a record number of records and bag five Ballon d'Ors, Adu failed to match the hype and now flogs vacuum cleaners on Twitter.

Two years after the match that put Adu on the international radar, Adu's form deteriorated so much the only offers he received were chiropractic.

Unable to fulfill American football's expectations, he moved abroad to begin anew at Benfica.

But after only making 11 performances in four years for the Portugese giants, he slipped off the footballing radar altogether.

After spells at middling Cyprian, Turkish and Serbian outfits the former-future-Pele ended up at KuFu-98, in the Finnish fourth division, last year.

After notching a measly 15 goals in 98 games in the decade since he left DC United, Adu's career recently came full circle when he returned to NASL outfit Tampa Bay Rowdies.