No U.S. men’s national team fan needs the reminder—especially not this week—but sometimes to get to where you want to go, you need to look back at where you’ve come from.
For Christian Pulisic, the images of his face buried in his shirt upon the devastation of the U.S.’s failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup were brutal then and remain so now. Here was a 19-year-old playing a bigger role than should have been necessary coming to grips with utter humiliation—at no fault of his own—following the infamous defeat in Trinidad & Tobago that sealed the U.S.’s fate.
Pulisic was the lone U.S. player to score in Couva in October 2017, and he’s one of the few remaining holdovers linking back to that group. He has gone on to win U.S. Soccer’s Male Player of the Year award three times since. For all of the U.S. talent sprouting up at top clubs in Europe, he remains the standard bearer for his rising generation. He’s a Champions League winner who has excelled in spurts at two of the biggest clubs and in two of the biggest leagues on the planet, and he’s still just 23. He’s more than held his own in the face of extreme hype. But while there have been times for others to step up throughout ’22 World Cup qualifying, the U.S. truly needs Pulisic to be its closer over the final three matches.
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The U.S. player pool is seemingly never at full strength, and, once again, a depleted top of the depth chart leaves the Americans thinned out. Brenden Aaronson has been ruled out with a knee injury. Gio Reyna and Tim Weah are players whom Gregg Berhalter has deemed unlikely to be 90-minute guys on multiple occasions during this window, if even once. Just three of the U.S.’s goals throughout qualifying have come from the center forward position (all through Ricardo Pepi, across two games, though he hasn’t scored a goal for club or country since that last October strike vs. Jamaica). Looking around the room, there aren’t many other places for the U.S. to turn for impact moments, starting at Estadio Azteca in Mexico on Thursday night and continuing in Orlando vs. Panama on Sunday before qualifying concludes in San José, Costa Rica, on March 30.
But that’s where the “LeBron James of soccer” is supposed to rise to the occasion, and in big games, Pulisic has developed a knack for coming through with key moments. He has two goals in qualifying, both interestingly off the bench. His first was a match winner just minutes into his performance vs. Mexico in Cincinnati in November, while the second was a match icer in the early-February win over Honduras. Both came in big spots, with the U.S.-Mexico stage needing no introduction, while the win vs. Honduras allowed the Americans to remain on a more streamlined path to the World Cup entering the final window. In June, it was his cold-blooded penalty kick that wound up clinching the Nations League title.
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There are also times when it looks as if Pulisic feels the need to shoulder the load a bit too much, and it’s something he has recognized himself. It’s not hard to spot. His ability and willingness to take on defenders are two of his hallmarks, but when he forces the issue, the frustration of turning the ball over or failing to produce meaningful chances tends to snowball. It doesn’t help that he’s also often the focus of opponents’ physicality, absorbing fouls that can take a cumulative effect on a player.
“Sometimes it is tough,” Pulisic told ESPN while at the FIFA Club World Cup with Chelsea in February. “I still haven’t completely learned. Especially going back to the U.S., sometimes I put too much pressure on myself that I need to do something special where I just need to play the best I can, do what I can do and hopefully people recognize that.
“It is just about playing my game, doing it to the best of my ability and not worrying about what any outside sources say because that’s not what really matters.”
Unlike in past camps, Pulisic isn’t coming in under a cloud of poor form or inactivity at Chelsea. He’s rolling in on the heels of a pair of goals in the Champions League round of 16, and he appears as engaged and as big of a part of Chelsea’s attack as he has been all season. He has big-game credentials for his club, too. In addition to the two recent goals vs. Lille, he scored in last season’s semifinal vs. Real Madrid to help send Chelsea to the final. He scored in an FA Cup final. He’s also been inches from scoring in Champions League, Club World Cup and Carabao Cup finals. And his current run of form couldn’t be better timed. The potential distraction of everything swirling at the club considering the sanctions on Roman Abramovich and forthcoming sale do not appear to have had a negative impact on his—or the club’s—play, and the U.S. should be better off for it.
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“It’s been a pleasure to watch,” Berhalter said before Pulisic’s arrival in camp. “I say this all the time. … It’s a rollercoaster, especially when you’re at a club like Chelsea. When you’re at these massive clubs, it’s very, very difficult.
"All they ask him to do is just to keep fighting, keep working and wait for his opportunity and he's done that and he's taken advantage of it. He's become again an important part of their team. He's shown that he can step up and score goals and make assists.
“He’s got a great knack for arriving in the penalty box and he’s got a finishing touch to him. He’s very good when he’s in front of goal.
“So for us, we expect very similar things. He needs to keep arriving in the box because we know, when he gets in good positions, he scores, and just continue to focus on the basics and he’ll be the leader that we expect him to be.”
If he can accomplish that over the next week-plus, then there won’t be a question as to what the lasting images of this qualifying cycle will be, and they’ll be ones that U.S. fans and Pulisic himself will happily look back on down the road.
