On a blistering summer day in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, an English soccer coach gave a pep talk to a group of 14 players as they sat attentively on a knee-high wall.
Whether the message was getting through was open to debate; only a handful of the players arrayed before the coach, Jonathan Vaughan, spoke English as their first language.
Ahmed Mohamed, a 17-year old from Alexandria, Egypt, had joined the team only days earlier. In doing so, he became part of a group that included players from Benin and Egypt, Nigeria and Guinea, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Uzbekistan.