USA’s Joe Scally looks like the perfect hybrid full-back at Gladbach

The seconds were ticking away, seemingly more quickly than normal, and Borussia Mönchengladbach were heading for another home defeat. This one, a fourth out of four against bottom club Mainz, would really sting.

One of their young players had seen enough. In the 89th minute he picked the ball up some distance from goal, scurried towards the penalty area, shifted it on to his right foot and thrashed a rocket of a shot up and over

Robin Zentner from range before the goalkeeper could even think about getting himself set. Borussia-Park erupted, and Gladbach had salvaged a point.

As he so often does, Joe Scally showed up when his club needed him most.

His late contribution here had been a while coming. It was his first goal in more than a year, and his first Bundesliga goal in two years. His previous goal came in a win at Wolfsburg, in better times for his club. Yet as much as he gleefully declared in the aftermath of that maiden strike that “I want to score again and again” to replicate the feeling, sticking the ball in the back of the net is Scally moonlighting from his normal responsibilities. Even at 20, he is somebody who those around him feel can be leaned on, and he always has been.

Scally grew up on Long Island and busied himself with a plethora of sports, although he has joked that “soccer was the only one of them that I actually liked.” After his potential became known, progress was quick. In March 2018 he signed a Homegrown Player contract at New York City FC making him, at 15, the second-youngest pro player in MLS history after Freddy Adu. Alongside Gio Reyna, he helped NYC FC win the 2018 Academy Championship and debuted for the first team in the US Open Cup that summer against crosstown rivals Red Bulls.

Along the way he was feasting on the experience and advice of others. Then-coach Patrick Vieira was a big influence and Scally has talked extensively of consciously aiming to follow in the footsteps of James Sands, twoand-a-half years his senior and the first New York City FC academy graduate to make it to the first-team roster. Despite his precocity Scally was still grounded enough not to neglect his studies, and he graduated high school early.

Adu struggled to build on the blaze of publicity that accompanied his arrival in the European game, though, but Scally’s journey looks different. He officially joined up with Gladbach on New Year’s Day 2021, the day after his 18th birthday, although his signing had been announced the previous November. He didn’t get the full Bundesliga experience from the off. With pandemic