MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Christian Pulisic understands the burden he carries as the top American player heading into a World Cup on U.S. soil.
“There’s pressure, I feel it. Yes, it’s there but it’s nothing that I can’t handle,” he said Friday ahead of friendlies against Belgium and Portugal, the last two games before coach Mauricio Pochettino announces his World Cup roster.
As the U.S. prepares to host the World Cup for the first time since 1994, "Under
Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen might as well be the team's theme song.
A decade after making his Bundesliga debut at 17 and five years after becoming the first American to play in a men's Champions League final, Pulisic is in the prime of his career after developing key roles with Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea and AC Milan.
He was clean-shaven when he burst on the scene in January 2016, so young that two months after making his national team debut that March he was allowed to leave training camp ahead of the Copa America to attend the Hershey High School prom back in Pennsylvania.
One year later, he collapsed on the field in tears, his youthful dreams shattered when the Americans lost at Trinidad and failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
When he spoke at a news conference Friday alongside teammate Weston McKennie, Pulisic had a few days of stubble, transformed from a prodigy to paramount. They first met as 13-year-olds on a bus from a hotel to training camp in Carson, California.
“He’s someone that carries a lot of weight on his shoulders, especially here at the national team and with his club team, as well,” McKennie said. “We all know that he’s a dangerous player, an important part of the team, someone that we can kind of lean on a little bit whenever we were in difficult times."
Pulisic has 32 goals in 82 international appearances, scoring in the 1-0 win over Iran at the 2022 World Cup that advanced the U.S. to the round of 16. To get the goal he crashed into goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand, injured his pelvis and wound up in a hospital.
Like most great athletes, he's learned to focus like a diamond drill bit on what he can control.
“It’s not much of a struggle for me. I’ve gotten pretty used to it. I’ve just deleted most social media off my phone," Pulisic said to assembled media. “You guys might think there’s more pressure than there is because you see it and read it and that’s what you guys do. But really like, I’m just kind of oblivious to it.”
While Pulisic scored 10 goals in his first 15 appearances for AC Milan this season, he has none in his last 12 games.
“He told me: `I need to score,'” Pochettino related. “Of course, I say relax, come (on), for sure you will score because you have the capacity.”
There are 27 players in camp hoping to be on the 26-man roster announced May 26 and several players with injuries or regaining fitness after a layoff are absent and could be in the group heading into the Americans' opener against Paraguay on June 12: Tyler Adams, Sergiño Dest, Diego Luna and Haji Wright.
Saturday's game against Belgium and Tuesday's match against Portugal may be their last chance to impress Pochettino in person.
“You can feel the intensity in the training. All the guys are wanting to really stake their claim and they want to be on that World Cup roster,” Pulisic said. “You can definitely feel the energy in the team and feel that it’s getting a little bit more serious and, yeah, the excitement for the tournament is obviously starting to get real.”
As for himself, Pulisic intends to share the pressure so it's not all on him.
“I’m going to, yeah, attack it head on,” he said. “We are as a team. I don’t need to do it by myself. That’s the beauty of it. I have guys like this. I have my whole team behind me, the staff, the country of fans, and I’m just going to do the best I can. That’s all I can do.”
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
