The highest-paid kicker in NFL history got his start chasing a very different ball. Three-time Pro Bowler Brandon Aubrey, who signed a four-year, $28 million extension with the Dallas Cowboys in April, built his athletic foundation on the soccer field long before he ever started playing football.
Aubrey’s path from the sport he loved first to the one that made him famous remains one of the most inspiring stories in professional sports. And with the 2026 FIFA World Cup now underway, the 31-year-old opened up to The Athletic about the players who shaped his soccer identity growing up.
Brandon Aubrey Reveals His Soccer Idols
Aubrey played youth soccer for the Dallas Texans and earned a scholarship to Notre Dame. Toronto FC selected him 21st overall in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft, but his professional soccer career never took off.
After stints with Toronto’s reserve squad and Bethlehem Steel FC in the USL, Aubrey walked away from the sport in 2018 and took a job as a software engineer at GM Financial in Arlington.
His wife, Jenn, changed everything, as while watching an NFL game together, she suggested he could kick a football for a living. Aubrey then spent two years with the USFL’s Birmingham Stallions, and in 2023, the Cowboys brought him to the NFL.
The soccer roots, though, run deep. Aubrey told The Athletic that Arsenal and French legend Thierry Henry was the player who captivated him most as a young athlete.
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“That’s how I learned to play soccer; upstairs, tight corridor, getting beat up by older kids, trying to find a way to compete,” Aubrey said. “I wanted to be just like [Thierry] Henry. It felt like he could make a play out of thin air. Anytime he touched the ball, it was electric.”
He also mentioned that apart from Henry, Clint Dempsey was another soccer player that he idolized growing up.
“Clint was skilful, powerful, not nearly as fast, but had grit anytime he was on the field,” Aubrey added. “It felt like he would find a way to win a game no matter what it took and no one was ever gonna push him around. I wanted that mentality.”
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Henry is now serving as a lead analyst for FOX Sports’ World Cup coverage alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic, offering his expertise on a new wave of talent lighting up the tournament.
With generational stars like Kylian Mbappe, Lamine Yamal, Florian Wirtz, and Michael Olise stepping into the spotlight once dominated by Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar for over a decade, the 2026 World Cup could produce the very kind of player who inspires the next generation of kids.
