So now there is a new prodigy and we’ll do it all over again, in spite of the loaded history and our better judgment. We’ll do it knowing full well that our impossible expectations cannibalized the chosen ones who came before him.

The boy is called Gedion Zelalem, not yet 18. He is – sigh – the Next Big Thing in American soccer, and he and his career will suffer for it.

Last year, Zelalem’s Ethiopian father acquired a U.S. passport. Last week, the Berlin-born Gedion acquired his own American citizenship. U.S. Soccer quickly moved to secure his eligibility to play for his new country – at the player’s request, it hastened to add.

From 2006 through 2013, the boy lived in Maryland, after playing in Bundesliga club Hertha BSC’s youth academy back in Germany. He was discovered by Arsenal and is now said to be the next Cesc Fabregas. Which is to say he is a world-class playmaker in the making. The USA has never had a world-class playmaker.

He has played for Arsenal twice, coming off the bench each time. Once in the FA Cup last season – becoming the first player to appear for manager Arsène Wenger born after the Frenchman took charge of the club – and once in the UEFA Champions League this season. He has played in the English Premier League zero times. He has played at the under-20 level internationally zero times. Yet many expect U.S. men’s national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann to call him up to the senior national team in the coming months. To get a look at him, to lock him down.

Excitement has soared. The fans and the media have quickly bloated expectations. Every yearning for American soccer glory is being projected on him. The boy with the biblical name is supposed to lead the U.S. to the Promised Land. Like Gideon of the Hebrew bible, who was a “destroyer” and a “mighty warrior.” Gedion the Great, who hasn’t done anything yet. The next Fabregas, who will make America a soccer power at last. Never mind that one player has never turned an otherwise mediocre team into a World Cup winner – or even a contender.

We have been down this road countless times before. Well, five times before.

[FC Yahoo: Finding truth in the great Messi Follows Chelsea on Instagram mystery]

First there was Freddy Adu, anointed at 14 as “the new Pelé.” He never grew into a professional’s body – possibly because he was older than advertised – and didn’t develop the requisite tools on the defensive side of the ball. At 25 – officially – he is without a team after washing out with Serbian club Jagodina last month. That was his 10th employer in 10 years.

Then came Jozy Altidore, the striker carved from granite who became a regular on the national team at just 19. By then he had already moved to Spain for $10 million – 2½ times the previous record fee paid for an American, namely Clint Dempsey – but he has bounced around since. He has been productive for the USA but failed with five of his six European clubs. He now clings on with Sunderland in the Premier League, where, at 25, it has become painfully apparent that he lacks the touch and aerial ability to ever truly excel at his position.

[FC Yahoo: Three pressing questions about the Gerrard-to-L.A. Galaxy deal]

Juan Agudelo, a New York Red Bulls product, just like Altidore, titillated us so. He had the touch and the instinct and the body as well. He served an apprenticeship under the old master Thierry Henry. But he was dealt to Chivas USA and then the New England Revolution. With his contract up, he signed with Stoke City in England. It seemed to be too early and it was. He hadn’t really stood out in Major League Soccer yet, a view shared by the English work permit commission, which denied him the right to play there. So he went on loan to FC Utrecht in the Netherlands, but last summer his work permit was denied again and Stoke cut him loose. Agudelo, 22, has been without a club since.

Next was Brek Shea, another victim of Stoke’s brief fetish for Americans, which ended in tears when Mark Hughes took over and showed no interest in playing any of them, save for Geoff Cameron. Shea had wanted out at FC Dallas, where he had regularly clashed with his coach, and had left for Europe prematurely as well. Predictably, he didn’t play much at a club that had little use for an eccentric American. At 24, he has just returned stateside to rebuild his career with expansion team Orlando City SC.

Finally, we arrive at Julian Green, the most recent recipient of Next Big Thing-ness, who is still only 19. He had played for Bayern Munich’s senior team for all of two minutes when he started receiving U.S. call-ups. He, too, had been poached from Germany’s bottomless youth program. Klinsmann’s assistant Andy Hertzog said he could be a new Franck Ribery, Bayern’s scintillating winger.

Green plainly wasn’t ready for the senior international level. But last summer, he went to the World Cup anyway, while Landon Donovan didn’t. (Some trade might have been made – a World Cup spot in exchange for Green’s commitment to the USA over Germany – although the principals deny it.) Green was barely fit and didn’t play until the Americans’ final game, wherein he did score on his first touch – a 107th-minute tally that reduced the deficit against Belgium to 2-1 in extra time of the round of 16.

The similarities between Green and Zelalem are many. Both are promising players with European powerhouses. Both forewent a chance to see where they might stand with the current world champions for a chance to play internationally immediately. Neither is far enough along in his career to allow us to make predictions for them with any kind of merit. If they were scientific studies, they would be conclusions drawn from a sample size of one.

Projecting their futures isn’t just unproductive; it’s also destructive. With young soccer players, it often feels like the best way to ensure that one won’t be great is to predict that he will. Developing stars is a numbers game. The more prospects you have, the better the chance a small handful deliver, usually after toiling at their craft in anonymity. Tabbing a single player for stardom is, well, whatever the opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy is. But we can’t help ourselves.

So what explains this impulse, the compulsive self-immolation? It seems to this foreigner that Americans have a yearning for the future, for whatever is next, which can never be sated. It’s hardwired into the DNA of a people that invariably came here in hopes of finding tomorrows that were better than their todays and yesterdays.

Godding up young athletes certainly isn’t exclusive to this country. It’s an international phenomenon. But the American soccer crowd is particularly eager. Perhaps that’s a function of the ambition for their national team – to be among the world’s very best, like America is in just about every other sport – outpacing its performance.

What’s needed for Zelalem – and Green, Shea, Agudelo, Altidore and, if it’s not too late, Adu – is restraint and patience. These are boys coming of age in a harsh environment, an industry in which judgment is continual and total. Additional, artificial pressure from outside does them no good at all.

But then writing articles to say that we shouldn’t be writing articles is counterproductive. So this very column is part of the problem, and perhaps one day complicit in the undoing of Gedion Zelalem.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.