Christian Pulisic doesn’t make it easy. Not on himself, not on those around him, not on the U.S. men’s national team fans who love him and endlessly cheer for him and have been waiting — and waiting and waiting — for him to become the program’s greatest player of all time.
World Cup 2026
Pulisic has taken a lot of fire since the USMNT’s disappointing departure from the FIFA World Cup. For the most part, all of it is fair and expected. When I was covering the New York Yankees in the early 2000s, Derek Jeter once told me that he learned, very quickly, that “you don’t only get to be famous on the good days.” That is Pulisic’s reality, too.
Landon Donovan says Pulisic’s inner circle is a problem. U.S. women’s national team legends Carli Lloyd and Sydney Leroux didn’t love Pulisic talking about how he was going to get some rest for his injured leg after being eliminated. Tim Howard indicated he felt similarly to Donovan, saying on a podcast about Pulisic that “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
None of it really matters. If you are a person who wants to have faith in this American team and the ability of Pulisic to help raise it to new levels, that noise is far less important than some objective facts:
Match Details
First, Pulisic was not good at this World Cup.
He played 45 minutes of amazing soccer in the opening match against Paraguay. Then he didn’t play again in the group stage until a shake-the-rust-off appearance against Türkiye in a meaningless game two weeks later. The game against Bosnia-Herzegovina was fine, but unremarkable. The defeat to Belgium, in which he lost the ball 14 times, was a nightmare. The closest he came to approaching consistent star level at this tournament was when he was alongside Lionel Messi in those endless commercials.
Second, Pulisic has an injury issue.
Tournament Impact
No one knows what he is feeling or how badly he is hurt in any given moment other than him, so there is no point in saying he “should have played through” something, or that he was “soft” for missing time. All we know for sure is that he sustained a bone bruise and microfracture in his lower leg in this tournament, and that he’s not reliably available. This meaningfully hurts him in short-term discussions about this tournament as well as larger “greatest USMNT player” debates because longevity (
Third, Pulisic has an optics problem.
Part of it may be bad luck and out of his control (like injury issues). Other elements, though, feel avoidable. Pulisic largely presents as a classic minimizer — something many athletes are, as presumably it reduces the feelings of pressure — but saying things like this World Cup is “just another big tournament,” as he did earlier this year, or putting in his post-elimination social media statement that “it’s just the start for us and for this sport in America” comes off as disconnected (if no
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