Brenden and Paxten Aaronson play on better soccer fields these days than the New Jersey basement known as “The Dungeon” where they used to practice penalties and free kicks.
“We had to put in special lights so they wouldn’t kick the light bulbs and break them,” mom Janell Aaronson recalled. “We had to do some padding on some of the poles that are in the basement so they didn’t get hurt. We made it as safe as we could.”
On June 10, she was in the stands at GEODIS Park in Nashville, Tennessee, watching them become just the fourth pair of brothers to start the same match together for the U.S. national team, the first since George and Louis Nanchoff against the Soviet Union in 1979.
“I played with this guy since, I don’t know, 5 — he was probably actually 2 at that time,” Brenden said. “Maybe 7, I was, and he was probably 4.”
Brenden, 24, already is a World Cup veteran, appearing as a substitute in all four U.S. matches at Qatar three years ago, Paxten, who turns 22 in August, hopes to make the World Cup roster for the first time when the U.S. co-hosts next year’s tournament.
“Completely different players. Both in different ways can perform,” U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said.
Both are on the roster for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, where the Americans play Guatemala on Wednesday night and hope to advance to a final against Mexico or Honduras on Sunday. Both are midfielders and wingers who made their way up through the Philadelphia Union academy system and moved to Europe after two seasons in Major League Soccer, Paxten at age 19 and Brenden at 20.
At the start of their national team camp together, they reflected on learning the sport in their backyard and the downstairs room given its nickname by their dad, Rusty.
“We always played in the basement, right before or after dinner,” Paxten said. “We had a basement with kind of like a mini-pitch that we built off of carpet and goals that we taped on the wall and stuff like that. So we would always just play down there and then come up for dinner, then after dinner go down and play, We broke a lot of lights.”
And learned competition.
“Toes have been stepped on,” Paxten said.
Their dad, Rusty, played college soccer at Monmouth, ran a risk management firm and is sporting director of Real Futbol Academy in Medford, New Jersey. In addition to the brothers, 18-year-old sister Jaden will be a freshman on Villanova’s soccer team this fall.
“I don’t know how these guys do it without having a younger brother or someone to train with,” Brenden said. “When you’re in a shooting drill, sometimes you can take times off. But you know he’s going to want to beat me and I’m going to want to be him, so you go that extra mile to keep even getting better at it.”
Brenden scored in his MLS debut with Philadelphia in March 2019 and has played for Salzburg (2021-22), Leeds (2022-25) and Union Berlin (2023-24). He made his U.S. debut in 2020 and has nine goals in 51 international appearances.
Paxten debuted in MLS with the Union in May 2021 and has played for Eintracht Frankfurt (2023-24), Vitesse (2024) and Utrecht (2024-25). He made his first U.S. appearance in 2023 and scored against New Zealand at last year’s Olympics.
Before the match against Switzerland, they hadn’t played on the same team together since the youth academy. They , when Brenden entered in the 83rd minute for Eintracht Frankfurt and Paxten in the 85th for host Union Berlin.
“There’s been some fights throughout the years,” Brenden said, with Paxten sitting adjacent and laughing. “It’s more in the one v. ones when I would get beat by him. Because you’re the older, you feel like you have to win. But he’s beat me a handful of times where I had a temper tantrum. I was kicking the ball against the wall. I literally — I can’t take it sometimes.”
But afterward, they resumed playing the FIFA video game.
Having the common “E” in the names of the siblings was mom’s idea.
“We spelled Brenden `E-N. I just liked the spelling of that vs. ‘A-N. Just visually. It looked better to me,‘” Janell said. “When we ended up having our other kids, I just made sure that they all ended in `E-N.’ I don’t know why. I just did that.”
After the Gold Cup and brief time off, Brenden will return to England to prepare for the Premier League season with newly promoted Leeds. Paxten will report to Eintracht Frankfurt unless he’s loaned again.
Trying to watch all their matches is daunting for their parents, who also will be at Villanova for Jaden.
“Sometimes when the games are on, I don’t like to get the updates because I do like to go back and watch,” Rusty said. “Sometimes I’ve looked at my phone, something good has happened and then the cat’s out of the bag and there’s no need to watch the game.”
Streamed replays are not for mom.
“I don’t even know how to work any of that,” she said.
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