At every stage of his career, Christian Pulisic has always relished playing for the USMNT. When he was a boy wonder at Borussia Dortmund, it was by scoring a ton of goals in the U.S.'s failed efforts to qualify for the 2018 World Cup that he introduced himself to the country and legitimized himself as more than just the next Julian Green. When he was alternating between sitting on the Chelsea bench due to injuries and sitting on the Chelsea bench because he'd slipped down the pecking order, getting to come and bang in CONCACAF was a way to rebuild his confidence. And now that he's in the form of his life for AC Milan, rounding into his prime by playing a huge role for a team competing for domestic and continental honors, his play with the USMNT feels equally expansive and ambitious. This is the best Christian Pulisic we've ever seen, a prospect that is equal parts encouraging and annoying.
The headlining event came in Monday night's huge win against Jamaica—where Captain America grabbed two goals in a thrilling 4-2 victory—though Pulisic built the foundation for that big performance by killing it for Milan all season. With Rafael Leão holding down Pulisic's preferred left wing position, the American has split his time in Italy this season between setting things up as a central attacking midfielder and ripping down the right wing. And rip he has: Pulisic leads Milan in Serie A goals and assists, and he's scored against Liverpool and gotten an assist against Real Madrid in the Champion's League. Milan has been slightly off the pace in Serie A this year, mostly because their backline has been somewhat wobbly and the new coach wasn't getting along with Leão, the club's best player. Throughout it all, though, Pulisic has been flying.
Pulisic has always been at his best when freed to take risks and try shit. A good deal of the goals he's scored and assists he's provided have been fairly rote, the product of a player who knows where to stand and where to kick the ball. He's always good for those sorts of opportunistic moments, but they are not what makes him special. The fully realized Pulisic, the one we're seeing now, is the guy who scores from the corner flag, who sneaks around a midfielder to nip the ball away, drives past a defender with a slick move, then speeds past two more to punch home the finish.
Pulisic played almost all of his debut season in Serie A last year on the right wing (ha ha) and has spent the slim majority of his time in the same position this year. He's effective on that side because it limits his game in a way that directs him towards his strengths. He's a good cutback passer, knows how to knife into scoring positions from any starting position, and no matter how many injuries he's suffered, he clearly has not lost his breakaway speed. The difference this year is that he's playing in the middle a bit more, which surprisingly has opened up global, associative possibilities it wasn't clear he had. New Milan manager Paulo Fonseca is playing him as a no. 10 at times, and he has thrived as the fulcrum of the attack, whereas traditionally he has tended to be one of its sharp edges. "Honestly, Pulisic doesn’t have the same impact as a winger that he does when he plays centrally, and when we changed the formation, the team was different,” Fonseca told Sky Sports.
Mauricio Pochettino played Pulisic in the middle for both games against Jamaica, and after a typically gritty 1-0 win in Kingston, the USMNT smoked their CONCACAF rivals 4-2 on Monday. They looked like a different squad than the leaden, terminal-era Gregg Berhalter teams that would smash hundreds of stupid crosses into the middle of the box in hopes that one of them would connect. There was a refreshing boldness to the USMNT's attack on Monday, with Pochettino making the choice to have Antonee Robinson tuck into the center of the field from his position at left back and help make space for Tim Weah out on the left. Weah usually plays on the right, but given a ton of space and freedom, he was incredible on the left. The U.S. looked deadly going down that side, and Weah nearly scored a banger three minutes in, only for the shot to ricochet off the inside of the post. The best highlight from the game is this aggregation of the best of the team's build-up play, as it shows how flexible and balanced the attack is right now.
"Honestly, it's the coach," Weah said when asked why the team looked so good. "We kind of just listened to what his instructions were in training, and we applied it to the field. He gives us the freedom to play." That's quite simple, as is putting the team's best player in a role where he has the most latitude to roam around and make plays. Pulisic kicked off the scoring in the 13th minute, scoring a goal that epitomized the vision of PochBall. With the Jamaicans wary of the U.S. left, they allowed Weston McKennie to drift into a huge pocket of space on the right. He used that space to charge forward, then smack a perfect pass to a sprinting Pulisic, who was taking advantage of the lurching Jamaica defense. He hit a beautiful first-timer, starting the rout.
Perhaps more eyebrow-raising than the goal was its immediate aftermath, which saw Pulisic, McKennie, Ricardo Pepi, and Weah all hit the goofy little Donald Trump dance that athletes across the sports world have been hitting en masse for the past week. When asked after the game about the dance, Pulisic gave an unintentionally revealing answer. "I thought it was a pretty fun dance," he said. "Obviously, that’s the ‘Trump Dance’ but it was just a dance that everyone was doing. He’s the one who created it, and I thought it was funny. It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun. I saw a bunch of people do it and thought it was funny, so I enjoyed it."
If we are to take Pulisic at his word (which I do, though his registered Republicanhood doesn't require one to) that there was nothing charged about the celebration in his mind, that belief belies a sense of either nihilism or incuriosity. It's one thing for an NFL player to do the silly-ass dance, but I'd argue the captain of the U.S. team doing so is different in kind. He's not representing the Las Vegas Raiders; he's representing the United States. It would be stupid of Pulisic to think there's no valence to something like that.
As disheartening as it was to see him dance in the corner, he ultimately comes off less malicious and more just kind of dumb here, to me. He is a wealthy white American athlete who has spent his entire adult life, including most of his teenage years, in single-minded pursuit of athletic glory. Surely, this is not a guy with deeply considered political views, even if I find the ones he seems to have stumbled into odious. Ultimately, he is a soccer player and, accordingly, will be judged for what he does on the field, which is: kick ass. I think you can love what Christian Pulisic does with his feet while simultaneously wanting nothing to do with whatever it is that goes on inside his head. Then again, if you're over seeing the United States represented by people with such a limited view of what the country is and who it is for, and therefore want nothing to do with anything Pulisic-related, that would be a perfectly justified conclusion as well.
