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Lucas Herrington was once dubbed a “baby giraffe” for his gangly frame, but he has emerged as a genuine bolter for the Socceroos’ World Cup squad. While the 18-year-old’s rapid growth has been a shock, his increasing favour with coach Tony Popovic is more than a reflection of his quality as a footballer.

Now proving his potential against the likes of Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller in MLS, Herrington is proof of how Australian football has become reliant on the United States, in terms of both talent development and financial survival.

The Queenslander was a rare bright spot last year in a season of struggle for Brisbane Roar, who finished second-from-bottom in the A-League Men. Now, his is a career transformed. Last month delivered duels with footballing luminaries Messi, Müller and Son Heung-min as the Australian established himself as a key contributor for the Colorado Rapids in MLS.

“The league is demanding,” says Herrington’s agent Buddy Farah, speaking on the phone from a Colorado game in the US. “But it’s not as demanding as some of the top European leagues, right? We are finding that quite a number of Australians are able to leave the A-League and transition into playing in MLS.”

Popovic’s Socceroos squad in March initially featured four players from MLS: Herrington, Kai Trewin, Aiden O’Neill and Patrick Yazbek. Kye Rowles, who was an ever-present for the Socceroos in Qatar, was added not long after. It meant US clubs contributed more players to the Australian squad than even those from the domestic A-League.

There are other Australians performing stateside, too. Archie Goodwin has been scoring for Charlotte, as has Portland defender Alex Bonetig, who was named in the matchday team in April. Ariath Piol’s promising season in Utah was cut short by injury.

This burgeoning trend of Australian players in MLS adds intrigue to the crucial World Cup clash between the hosts and the Socceroos in Seattle, to be screened back across the Pacific in the early morning of 20 June.

The two teams played each other last year in a friendly, won 2-1 by the USA, in what was only the fourth match between the sides. In women’s football, however, the two nations – which both have relatively stronger women’s teams than men’s – know each other well. Not only have they played each other more than 30 times (the Australians have won just once), the NWSL and A-League Women used to have complementary seasons, allowing even senior USWNT players and Matildas to alternate between them.

For Australian male professionals the American league has been an unusual destination. Barely 20 Australians have played in an MLS match since Danny Allsopp became the first for DC United in 2010 (most notable among that group is Tim Cahill, who played for the New York Red Bulls). Yet with almost half that number currently with MLS clubs, the connection is growing.

Farah says MLS makes sense as a place for promising if internationally unproven Australian players like Herrington to go. “We don’t really have too many success stories on Australian players going straight into some of these big European leagues and making an immediate impact,” he says, adding while there was interest in the defender from Europe last year, they decided to prioritise playing time in an English-speaking country.

“We certainly felt like he would be able to transition out of the A-League where he was playing consistently, into MLS where he can continue to play consistently, and make sure that the ascendancy of his development would continue.”

Popovic said in March MLS now appears an ideal first overseas stop for emerging Socceroos, and a place where Australians’ success increasingly breeds opportunity. “Due to what Aiden O’Neill’s doing, or Patrick Yazbek’s doing, [American clubs] say, ‘OK, well maybe we can go a bit younger and see what else is out there’,” Popovic said during the final pre-World Cup international break. “I’m hoping a lot more can go there and then hopefully the next step is that they can go to one of the big leagues in Europe.”

Herrington has already been linked with a move across the Atlantic during his MLS debut season, during which he has impressed for the Rapids, who are currently mid-table in the Western Conference. He was named on the MLS team of the matchday after his home debut in March, and by May the Australian defender was leading the competition in touches, underlining his potential as a composed ballplayer with a towering 192cm physique.

Zac Anderson, former A-League defender and now Brisbane’s chief operating officer, first saw Herrington – a childhood fan of his hometown club – at the age of 15. “He looked very similar to how he looks today, like a bit of a baby giraffe, but you could see he had this maturity about him,” he says. “He had a really nice, graceful flow to the way he played football.

“A common thing that you’ll hear about Lucas whenever you speak to anyone that has spent some time with him is that every level that he’s jumped, he’s been able to take on the challenge in a calm, mature, kind of elegant fashion.”

Herrington’s success in the US is not just a benefit for the Socceroos. Brisbane Roar included a 20% sell-on clause in his $1m transfer to Colorado, meaning that if a $10m-plus transfer to Europe comes to fruition, the A-League Men club would be entitled to a windfall of around $2m, roughly half of an Australian club’s entire annual payroll.

As MLS outfits continue to spend, fuelled by increasing club valuations – up 6% to US$767m (AU$1.06bn) this year, according to Sportico – the league serves as both a source of immediate revenue for A-League clubs, and a shop window to bring in future windfalls.

“I believe our market in Australia is still quite immature, and we have to be realistic with what we can actually attract in terms of transfer fees to MLS and Europe,” Anderson says. “The important thing for us was that on-sell [clause], because we really believe that there’s going to be moves in the future that allow us to capitalise on Lucas again.”

USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino called up just four outfielders from US clubs in the March window (plus another from Vancouver) to complement his largely European-based squad, continuing a trend away from MLS talent. In that context, the Socceroos’ MLS contingent of Trewin, Rowles, O’Neill and Yazbek [UPDATE FOLLOWING INJURY NEWS] is significant. June’s World Cup may come too soon for Herrington. But he, like MLS, are features of Australia’s football future.