Like, could a guy advertised as our best attacking player score a goal in the calendar year 2025. Its a crazy expectation.
Both sides of the coin can be true at the same time. He is our most talented player. In fact, if he'd kept up his form of the first half of the Milan season, he may have been a finalist for the Ballon d'Or (which is the top 30-35 players). If we're going to beat top 10 nations in the World, and get to at least a quarterfinal, Pulisic needs to impact goals for the USMNT. People want MORE. We can't say "oh, his shot was off." Yeah, we know. His shot has been off for two years with the USMNT. Since the start of calendar year 2025 he's had 1 goal and 0 assists for the USMNT. And we get that he took the summer of 2025 off. We gave him that rest so that he could be in great form for 2026. Well, we need to see that form.
Yep. “Creating space” is a very low bar for contributing. Altidore believers used to praise him for that at Sunderland lol.
How many players are officially in the 50 goals and 50 assists club in international soccer? Lionel Messi Neymar Landon Donovan End of List Cristiano Ronaldo is the closest to joining that list. He's way over on goals and officially has 46 assists. Assists weren't really a counting stat until the modern era. People have gone back and watched as many games of Puskas as are possible. He likely was in this category, but its not certain what his assist total would be. Same for other legends of bygone eras. Was it actually the 94 World Cup when FIFA started officially counting assists? I think I saw that somewhere. .............................I once saw a stat of the percentage of USMNT goals that Landon Donovan either scored or assisted on from 2001 to 2011. It was a crazy percentage. I think a new generation of fans doesn't understand fully how dependent the USMNT was on Landon Donovan. That was UNTIL Dempsey fully emerged. Their peaks didn't overlap despite being similar in age. Pulisic can get to 50 international goals. His stats do suffer from not having all of the rounds of WCQers against CONCACAF opposition this cycle. Then not playing in either the 2023 or 2025 Gold Cups. If he does the same thing in the next cycle, he won't amass the stats that he could have. And he certainly won't approach caps records either. He just now passed halfway to Cobi Jones caps record. [We thought Donovan or Bradley had a chance to break that. Neither got there in the end. I'm pretty sure that if Bob Bradley wasn't fired midway thru the 2014 cycle, Donovan would have gotten there. Bob would have given him the benefit of the doubt that Klinsmann didn't.]
He's simply got to play better for us to go far at the World Cup. I don't mean this in a derogatory way; it's actually the opposite. But he can't be as sloppy as he was in that game and expect us to win. I don't really get diving into the legacy discussion. It's pointless, especially right before the World Cup, where the actual performance will go a long way. But I do start to question his leadership. He really didn't play or act like a guy setting a tone that we have three games left to the World Cup.
Our secret sauce used to be the small pool. Guys played with each other over and over and over. There was great cohesion. We're still doing try-outs in the last games before the WC. Our players have to be better individually than the opponent. And, even then, there may be a team with worse individual players that has better cohesion. We have a difficult pool to manage. But, I feel like Poch should have picked a group a year ago. Stuck with it, with maybe a couple of adjustments, rather than this Yahtzee approach of shaking the dice in a cup before each camp. Here's the roster for the 2024 Copa America. Goalkeepers (3) Matt Turner Ethan Horvath Sean Johnson ️ Defenders (9) Cameron Carter-Vickers Chris Richards Tim Ream Antonee Robinson Joe Scally Kristoffer Lund Mark McKenzie Miles Robinson Shaq Moore ⚙️ Midfielders (8) Tyler Adams Weston McKennie Yunus Musah Giovanni Reyna Luca de la Torre Johnny Cardoso Malik Tillman Brenden Aaronson ⚡ Forwards (6) Christian Pulisic Timothy Weah Folarin Balogun Ricardo Pepi Josh Sargent Haji Wright The WC roster will probably be pretty damn similar. Freese will start. Agyemang in for Sargent. LDLT and Musah out. Shaq Moore and CCV out. We could have been getting these guys reps. Our pool is ridiculously injury prone. So, there would have been roster spots available. But, we could have been building this team.
Let me clarify my point a bit. I have no problem with critiquing a player, and in this case Pulisic, and expecting the best out of them. I do too. The key I was trying to make was my last sentence for those saying we shouldn't start Pulisic. Its fine to say he's not at his best. Its flat silly to say he should be on the bench.
Not having him on corners was fantastic. He was also good tracking back. Don’t care about all the other arguing.
Shrug. I think the whole thing is prone to over-reaction. Belgium is better than us, and showed us why. Pulisic needs to be more impactful, and he's said in the press after the game that he needs to be. He's not shying away from it. He's not hiding. ‘I Have to’—Christian Pulisic Makes Key Promise After Latest USMNT Setback He's made a promise—he’s going to score, soon, after telling manager Mauricio Pochettino: “I need to score,” earlier in the week, according to The Athletic’s Henry Bushnell. “For me, it’s disappointing,” Pulisic added after the game. “I feel I can do better on one of the chances.” “It’s been a tough patch, but I feel confident in the way I’m playing ... I feel good, and I’m creating chances. So I just have to stay positive and keep going, but I have to be more clinical in those moments.”
Pochettino is considering tactical adjustments to help Pulisic be more dangerous. He’s aware that Pulisic needs to deliver more. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_...es-considering-tactic-shift-get-pulisic-track
The continued underrating of Landon Donovan makes people overrate Christian Pulisic. If you understand how good Donovan was, you should be absolutely delighted if Pulisic is matching his impact and output.
I mean Donovan racked up tons of goals/assists in games against CONCACAF competition. Pulisic hasn't yet had the same opportunities to do the same but he def needs to get it done lest folks continually talk of hype and not actual results.
in many ways, Pulisic fits into our team like Dempsey. Were/are on the field mostly for goals. Pulisic is a bit more balanced on goals/assists but neither was on the field for their defense. Donovan, on the other hand was a two way player. His offensive contributions were dominant, but his ability to track back and still produce offensively doesn’t get mentioned. Donovan didn’t have to be given a role that hid his defensive weaknesses. He wasn’t just goals and assists. this isn’t a slap on Clint or Christian’s face. Each one of them has/had talents/qualities that Donovan did not.
The fact is that Donovan played in every camp he could. For most of his career, he played the in the domestic camps (like January camp) and the full camps. He played in the WCQers every cycle. He played in the Gold Cups. He also stayed remarkably healthy thru the majority of his prime. Pulisic, on the other hand, doesn't do that by definition. He's never played in any domestic camps. He's only played in one Gold Cup. [He's chosen to play in the Nations League, which is a shorter event.] We didn't have WCQers in this window to rack up goals against T&T. And, by the way, thru our first 10 WCQers in 2022 he had 1 goal and 0 assists. There was one window in which he was recovering from COVID and didn't look like himself. Then he had an ankle injury that kept him out of other windows. That is to say that he hasn't been remarkably healthy thru his prime like Donovan was. And by the way, opting out of friendlies and CONCACAF competition against Grenada is fine. Heck, in this friendly window we see alll sorts of players in top leagues opting out of games. The number of Arsenal players that have decided they have a minor injury in this window is remarkable. [Zubimendi, Gabriel, Saliba, Eze, Rice, Saka, Madueke, Hincapie, Trossard, Timber either fully opted out or have left camp. 10 players.] Christian Pulisic has a better goals per cap rate than Landon Donovan. He still does despite this cold streak. if he played in every USMNT game like Donovan did, we'd be talking about him challenging records even more. To be the GOAT, I don't think CONCACAF goals against Cuba matter anyway. Donovan scored 5 goals at the World Cup. Dempsey scored 4. They both had more than one strong World Cup. Pulisic already has one strong World Cup performance under his belt. One goal. To be the GOAT, and surpass Donovan/Dempsey, he needs more. That's the stage that matters. And he has this chance. You look at Brian McBride's goalscoring for the USMNT, and there are goals against a lot of CONCACAF shrapnel. But he did the business at multiple World Cups. That's what makes him a legend. And why Jozy Altidore isn't held in the same esteem despite scoring more goals and having a BETTER goals per cap rate than McBride. Altidore has a better goals per cap rate than Landon Donovan (they didn't play the same position, but its true). So what?
I don't know about three goals. Three assists will also work. He needs to be making goal contributions. And he can do that against the Paraguay, Australia, Turkey level of teams. Doing it against the Belgium/Portugal level teams is difficult. They're top ten teams in the World for a reason. And the coaches of these teams aren't fools. When you watch, for instance, the Nations League game against Panama................their tactics were clear. Stop Pulisic and make somebody else beat us. It worked like a charm. Every time Christian got the ball in that game he was harassed by three defenders, got hacked, and not allowed to perform. Sure enough, in that game, Josh Sargent wasn't going to beat them. Yunus Munas wasn't going to beat them. Tanner Tessmann wasn't going to beat them. We were impotent against their bunker. We had a couple of opportunities generated thru Tim Weah, who was playing on the left wing in that game. Pulisic isn't in this alone. If the opposition takes away Pulisic, somebody else needs to step up. Gio Reyna needs to step up. Malik Tillman needs to step up.
What is important isn’t the number of goals but the size of the contribution. The obvious alternative is assists, but there are other ways to make a difference for the team as well.
to follow up a bit. The great ones don’t have great games every time out, but when their game is off, they still find a way to contribute. It could be tracking back, pressing, making unselfish runs that aren’t on stats…
I’m not sure current form Pulisic would rack up numbers in the Gold Cup unless in a group stage rout.
So you’ve pointed out some of his strengths, are you able to see his weaknesses; or do you think he’s a complete player?
People are whining about Poch experimenting with Pulisic. Maybe if Pulisic had shown up last summer Poch would have found him the right spot by now.