Man, oh, Manu: After just 14 games of college soccer, Duah starts for San Diego FC

UC Santa Barbara was in town Wednesday to play the University of San Diego in men’s soccer. Manu Duah was at Torero Stadium, watching his former Gauchos teammates.

Had he stayed in school, Duah would be a sophomore at UCSB.

Instead, he drove to East County the next morning for practice with San Diego FC, where he has been a starting center back for the past 10 games on the team that leads the Western Conference and will remain in first place no matter what happens Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium against second-place Minnesota United.

“It’s too crazy,” Duah said after SDFC practice Thursday. “Obviously, I want to see my (college) team always do their best, and I want to see my friends. I watch them and think, ‘I could have been out there playing with them.’ But here, too, it’s not a bad choice.

“I just never imagined that this was going to happen so quickly.”

Three months ago, Duah had never appeared in an MLS game. A year ago, he missed the entire conference season with a knee injury. Two years ago, he was watching one college program after another back off on his recruitment because he was too old to play his senior season in high school and didn’t have enough classes to graduate a year early and qualify under NCAA regulations.

Four years ago, he in Ghana with an uncertain future.

Nine years ago, he was one of four children to a widowed mother who made food and sold it at the local market in Kumasi, not enough to support mounting school fees for all four. Duah offered to leave school and leave home for a year-round soccer academy in the capital of Accra, four hours away, that offered few opportunities to visit his family.

“I decided to take the path through soccer,” Duah said.

He was 11.

It was that maturity, as much as the rangy 6-foot-4 physique and sublime vision, that attracted San Diego FC to the kid whose body of work in college consisted of no goals and one assist in 14 games and didn’t include any all-conference accolades. As an expansion team, SDFC was granted the No. 1 overall pick in the MLS SuperDraft for college players.

They didn’t hesitate. Duah was their guy.

“We drafted him for a reason,” coach Mikey Varas said. “He has talent, but he also has tremendous character. Early on, he wasn’t ready to play because of an injury and we also needed to get him pro-ready, physically. He bought in 100%. He showed an ability to see longer term for himself and recognized the work he had to do.

“He has that growth mindset in him. It’s really, really clear.”

From Ghana, Duah went to the Dunn School in Los Olivos outside San Barbara and broke the school record for assists with 51 despite not playing his senior year. When he attempted to reclassify and was two classes short – and the NCAA historically only considers a waiver if you’re one short – Duah’s recruitment suddenly stalled.

“We rolled the dice with him,” UCSB coach Tim Vom Steeg said. “Everybody went away, and we kept his scholarship out there until June, when the NCAA cleared him. We were the only one who hung in there. We kind of got a gift from the NCAA.

“On the first day of practice, you just knew he was special.”

Duah remained under the radar after a knee injury wiped out his Big West season. He returned for the NCAA Tournament, where the Gauchos won 1-0 at UCLA and came from 2-0 down at Stanford before losing in a penalty shootout. That, and a solid pre-draft combine, was enough to catch the eye of SDFC scouts.

Duah is part of the Generation Adidas, a joint program between MLS and U.S. Soccer that allowed him to enter the SuperDraft after his freshman year without counting against a team’s senior roster for up to three years. The program also pays for college for those wishing to continue their studies.

Perhaps the most impressive and intriguing part of Duah’s journey, though, is not his ascension but his position. He’s been a defensive midfielder his entire life. For SDFC, he’s played exclusively as a central defender.

“They never mentioned it when they drafted me, because they had top recruited center backs,” Duah said. “There was no talk of being a center back. But sometimes things happen in life. I came back from injury and I had the opportunity, and I took it.”

SDFC lost one veteran center back for the season to injury. Then two more went down.

Duah made his MLS debut on June 25, playing the final minute of a 5-3 win against Vancouver. He’s been a regular starter since mid-July and hasn’t subbed out in the last six games.

Varas admits it. Duah might not have known he could become a central defender, but the club did.

“From the beginning, we also knew he could play center back,” Varas said. “That’s our job, right? We see players and what they do positionally, but we also look at overall attributes that they have and what else can they be. You have to remember, we’re trying to develop players for the highest level, so you have a little bit of different vision for each player.

“He just grabbed that thing and ran with it. He’s got this competitiveness about him and this ability to learn from mistakes, which is the most important thing for young players. … He’s shown this ability to continuously try things — he’s really brave — and then learn when they make sense and when they don’t make sense for future performances.”

And there has been the occasional mistake. In his first start, a deflected pass led to an own goal and an early 1-0 hole. But his teammates rallied around him and salvaged a 1-1 tie behind a 79th minute goal from fellow rookie center back Ian Pilcher.

It’s been that kind of season for SDFC, that kind of season for their rookie defensive midfielder turned center back.

“No, I’m not surprised,” Vom Steeg, his college coach, said after sorely missing Duah in a 3-1 loss at USD. “I’m surprised about the position. But the level doesn’t matter. He has this awareness on the field that you can’t coach. You can translate that awareness to any game. He’s just very comfortable, he doesn’t get flustered, he keeps asking for the ball. He knows if he receives the ball with his frame and his body, you can’t take it off of me.

“Then you put him on a team like San Diego that values possession, and it’s a perfect fit.”

Center back? Defensive mid?

At this point, it doesn’t matter to him. Duah is playing, learning, growing.

“I feel like I have more potential in me, where it’s still in there and I’m finding it,” he said. “At some point it’s going to come out. I feel like I’m working hard towards it, like I’m definitely going to get it out.”

San Diego FC (17-7-5) vs. Minnesota United (14-6-9)

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Snapdragon Stadium

TV: Apple TV

Radio:  760-AM (English), 1700-AM (Spanish)