TUKWILA, Wash. – Forward Victor Mansaray has been selected at No. 1 to the USL 20 Under 20, the league announced Friday after a two week countdown. In collaboration with TopDrawerSoccer.com, the USL launched the 20 Under 20 last Tuesday to identify the top 20 young talents in the USA under the age of 20. After a training session on Wednesday, Seattle Sounders FC 2 head coach Ezra Hendrickson spoke to the media about the selection.
“It’s a great honor for not just Victor but for the club,” he said. “To have a player like him in the organization speaks volumes to the kind of recruiting that we do and the kind of players we have in our program…I’m happy for him.”
The selections were made from a pool of over 140 players eligible according to the FIFA U20 World Cup age cutoff of January 1, 1996, and voted upon by coaches across the USL with insight from TopDrawerSoccer.com.
Mansaray, 19, signed as a Homegrown player in November 2014 after first proving his mettle in the Sounders FC Academy in 2012. Originally from Sierra Leone, Mansaray moved to Western Washington as a teenager and attended Fife High School.
He has been a mainstay for S2 in its first two seasons as well as a contributor to the first team Sounders and US Men’s National Team U-20s. He was most recently called in for the Under-20 team in the 2016 U-20 Men’s NTC Invitational earlier this summer in California and is currently training with Norwegian second-tier club Åsane and will train with first-division club Brann next week.
“I just want to say it’s all about the team,” said Mansaray prior to leaving for Europe. “Those guys out there put me in a good position to score goals.”
Midfielder Mark O’Ojong was also selected to the list at number 12 last week. Check out the full list right here.
