Soccer has taken Duncan McGuire across North America as a breakout star since joining Orlando City SC via last season’s MLS SuperDraft presented by adidas. Now his journey has led him to Bordeaux, a cradle of French history and culture where the US men’s Olympic team are encamped for their final preparations before kicking off the 2024 Summer Games against the host nation on Wednesday afternoon (3 pm ET | USA Network, Telemundo).
Their schedule will take the young Yanks to Marseille and Saint-Étienne, and eventually, they hope, back to Bordeaux or Paris and other destinations should they advance to the knockout stages. And with clubs across Europe watching this competition closely as substantial transfer interest in the big striker simmers, a strong tournament could soon jet McGuire towards untold new adventures.
There’s something poetic about how the roots of this journey are thousands of miles away in the US heartland, in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. There McGuire grew up far from the national soccer radar and the youth academies where a steadily increasing proportion of US professionals – and most of his Olympic teammates – are nurtured.
“I could imagine it could’ve gone probably a lot differently, to be honest,” he said. “I mean, everyone I've talked to has said, ‘You have your own path.’ It's kind of like my path has been a little bit unique in a way, as playing in college and not doing academies, which I find is cool because it’s different than the usual path taken. And I'm proud of the path I've taken, how I’ve gotten here.”
Family ties
McGuire happily reports he’ll have loved ones on hand for this next chapter, with family members making the trip from Nebraska to Marseille for the opener against France, most notably his younger brother, and possibly his biggest fan, Holden.
Holden has Down Syndrome, and the challenges accompanying that have made his relationship with Duncan that much closer and more meaningful. The two spent long hours kicking a soccer ball around in the family basement when they were young, and Duncan later volunteered at Holden’s school in his teens. They remain in near-daily contact.
“When I was younger, getting that he was different and wasn't going to have a completely normal life was kind of hard. That's just how it's going to go,” said McGuire of his brother. “But he just has such a positive energy and he's always in a good mood and he's always someone you want to be around.”
While Holden, their parents and their two older siblings have visited for Orlando home matches and travel across the Midwest for away days in places like Chicago and Cincinnati, they’re making their longest trip yet to cheer him on at the Olympics.
“Growing up, we were really tight,” McGuire said of Holden. “Two brothers messing around all the time. It's been tough the past few years, going to college, not living at home anymore. But, I mean, we're still FaceTiming every day – we gave him iPad FaceTime permission now, which was kind of bad at first, getting like 30 calls a day. But now he’s relaxed a bit!
“He's my best friend. He's awesome. He's 20 now, which is weird to think about because he doesn't look 20. But he's in school, he's doing well. He kind of just does the same routine every day. So I like to FaceTime him when I get the chance to talk to him and see how his day’s going. When I'm back in Omaha, I like to hang out, go to the park with him, go sledding when it's wintertime because that's basically the only time I'm home. I just kind of like to spend as much time with him as I can.”
What makes McGuire’s success story more remarkable is those childhood days offered scant hints of the excellence he would achieve in soccer. He had no family ties to the sport, just a spark of talent and interest as a kid that his father supported despite having been a basketball player in his day.
“Growing up, I tried all the sports, and then around 8 or 9, I realized I was kind of only good at soccer. So I stopped playing every other sport and decided to do club soccer,” McGuire told MLSsoccer.com from the US Olympic camp. “And I made some good friends, and my dad was the one that always took me to practice. He was my grade-school coach because my mom was with my sister at volleyball all the time.
“I was on like three or four teams at a time; just the relationships I was making with friends and different people at the time was what made me fall in love with the sport. And I never really watched it growing up because I was too busy playing it,” he added. “That’s how I fell in love with the game, just playing it so much growing up and never really having time for anything else.”
College days
The only true No. 9 included on this Olympic roster by coach Marko Mitrović carries all the hallmarks of the proverbial late bloomer. McGuire spent his entire upbringing in Omaha and never seriously considered leaving when moving up to a higher level became a possibility, mostly because one of NCAA soccer’s elite programs sat just 10 minutes away from his house.
While USL League One club Union Omaha has built a strong following since debuting in 2020, the region’s soccer culture has long centered on Creighton University. That’s where McGuire went to summer camps for many years as a child and later became a regular at their matches.
When head coach Johnny Torres and his staff offered the local kid a spot ahead of his graduation from high school in 2019, that was all he wanted or needed.
“Everyone in Omaha would go to Creighton games and it was the team that everyone in Omaha wanted to play for, even though I think Creighton looks abroad [for recruiting] a little bit more than they do the Omaha kids,” he explained. “They've been a powerhouse for so long and they've been a really good program. I had season tickets, went for like five years, and it was kind of all I knew through the camps and basically all my Friday nights. So I was super ecstatic to get the offer, and I said ‘yes’ right when I got it.”
The idea of becoming a pro was still a distant dream at best. With Luke Haakenson, who went on to play for Nashville SC, the established starter at the striker position, Duncan happily redshirted as a freshman. He then totaled five goals and three assists in 31 appearances across his next two seasons, modest numbers unlikely to draw sustained attention from pro scouts.
A productive offseason stint (4g/3a in 11 matches) in USL League One with Oregon side Lane United in 2022 was, in retrospect, a hint of the leap forward he was about to make. But it wasn’t until that autumn when McGuire popped onto MLS radars, as he broke Creighton’s single-season scoring record with 23 goals, powering the Bluejays to the College Cup and earning the MAC Hermann Trophy Award, college soccer’s highest individual honor.
“The whole first two years I wasn't playing too well, but I still wanted to get to this level, this point of my career. I wanted to get here, but wasn't having the seasons to do it,” he recalled. “But once I started scoring a lot of goals and found confidence in myself, I believed I could do it, and that's when I realized, ‘I think I can perform at the next level and get to MLS and do well.’
“I just think the team as a whole was playing better collectively. We had an identity that we wanted to play with every game and we had a way of scoring that we wanted to repeat every game,” he explained, deferring credit for his breakout to his teammates. “We never got shut out as a team. The wingers, in all positions, their goal was to find me in the box, which is kind of what every striker wants to hear, so that's what helped me at that moment.”
Launching pad
Orlando have astutely utilized the SuperDraft over the years, particularly strikers, with Daryl Dike and Cyle Larin as chief examples. Head coach Oscar Pareja and his colleagues saw another such diamond in the rough in McGuire, making him the sixth overall pick of the 2023 edition, and soon reaped further rewards as the rookie bagged 13g/3a last year, winning the starting job over veteran Designated Player Ercan Kara.
All that made him a desirable commodity abroad. A dramatic and ultimately painful transfer saga unfolded with Blackburn Rovers over the winter, with McGuire seemingly sealing an 11th-hour move to the English Championship club, only for it to collapse over a paperwork snafu.
In the meantime, Orlando had already acquired his replacement in Luis Muriel, another pricey import. Yet McGuire shook off the disappointment and worked his way back into a vital role at OCSC, largely outperforming the Colombian international to date – while occasionally partnering with him in a two-striker setup – and keeping on track for this summer’s Olympic expedition.
“What I went through, or didn't go through, it was a tough plane ride back to the States,” he said last week. “But my teammates in Orlando obviously welcomed back with open arms, and they just wanted to move on to the next game and take the season seriously and [said], ‘Forget about that, we don't care what happened and we're going to help you the best we can to get back on track.’”
Road ahead
Big questions still hang over McGuire’s head.
Will another European suitor step up to meet Orlando’s asking price? Or might he and the Lions agree on a new, more lucrative contract? (His 2024 guaranteed compensation falls just under $100,000 according to MLS Players Association documents, which makes him arguably the best value in the entire league.) And can he shoulder the attacking burden for the Olympic team, whose other No. 9 options like Paxten Aaronson and Taylor Booth are fundamentally different from him?
McGuire sounds calm about all that, perhaps because he holds the keys in his hands.
“Any environment I get brought into, I feel like I'm called upon for goals. I would hope that's what they're expecting of me because that's what I expect of myself,” he said of his Olympic responsibilities. “Paxten’s a great forward as well, more of a false 9 role, but he can play that position well himself. He's an amazing player.
“But yeah, for myself, personally, I’d like to score a few goals in the Olympics and help us win gold.”
As for the prospect of a future move?
“I try not to think about the contract talks or transfer talks that much until something real is in front of me. So I kind of just don't bother and let my agent take care of it,” he said. “Being in France, a bunch of clubs are going to be here watching and it's a big tournament. So there's lots of eyes on us to showcase our skills ... it's obviously a place to show what you've got.
“I think about how everything happens for a reason. So I guess we'll see what happens after the Olympics, whether I stay in Orlando, which I'd be happy to. Or if the opportunity to go somewhere else comes up, I'll look at the opportunity.”
