Sporting Kansas City midfielder Gianluca Busio grabbed headlines across the soccer world with a stunning free kick on Saturday night, sparking an emotional and entertaining 3-2 win over Houston Dynamo FC as Children's Mercy Park welcomed its first full-capacity crowd in almost 15 months.
Busio's strike came one day after his 19th birthday—offering a prompt reminder of his status as a rising MLS star—but the fact of the matter is this: the talented midfielder is no stranger to jaw-dropping golazos.
A native of North Carolina, Busio moved to Kansas City in 2016 to join the Sporting KC Academy and lived with a host family through a program currently supported by the Audi Goals Drive Progress initiative. As evidenced below, he scored several brilliant goals during his time in the Academy and ultimately parlayed those magical moments into an MLS contract by the age of 15.
Busio and Sporting (5-2-1, 16 points) are off this weekend and will return to action on June 12 when expansion club Austin FC (2-4-1, 7 points) visits Children’s Mercy Park in a 2 p.m. CT kickoff. Tickets for the contest are available at SeatGeek.com as Sporting battles for a fourth successive win.
