The Man Behind the Number

Chapter one · Roots

New Jersey. Haiti. The world.

Josmer "Jozy" Altidore was born on November 6, 1989, in Livingston, New Jersey, to parents who had emigrated from Haiti, and grew up in Boca Raton, Florida. He has spoken often about his father's path — arriving in the United States and working relentlessly to build a life — as the template for his own. In his telling, he was never a celebrity in his own mind; he was simply a son of Haitian immigrants carrying a family's ambitions forward.

That dual identity — unmistakably American, proudly Haitian — runs through every chapter that followed. It shaped the striker who wore the U.S. crest 115 times, and it shapes the investor and philanthropist he is today.

Chapter two · Prodigy

A professional at sixteen

In 2004 he entered U.S. Soccer’s residency program at IMG Academy in Bradenton — the youngest player on the roster at the time. Altidore turned professional in 2006 with the New York Red Bulls, debuting at just 16 and earning U.S. Soccer's Young Male Player of the Year award the same year. By 2008, Spain's Villarreal had made him one of the most expensive outgoing transfers MLS had seen — a teenager stepping into La Liga — and that summer he played for the U.S. at the Beijing Olympics. A year later his goal helped stun Spain in the Confederations Cup semifinal, on the way to a runners-up finish.

Chapter three · Europe

Proving ground

European football tested and refined him. A short loan at Xerez yielded no appearances; a Premier League loan at Hull City and a spell in Turkey with Bursaspor were followed by his breakout in the Netherlands: in 2012–13 at AZ Alkmaar he scored 31 goals, a record for an American in a European league, and lifted the KNVB Cup. Sunderland brought him back to England in 2013, the same year he was named U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year.