(Two days after our conversation, Milan lost their final Serie A game of the season to Cagliari, missing out on the Champions League. In response, AC Milan’s ownership fired the head coach, Massimiliano Allegri, as well as the club’s CEO and backroom staff, throwing Pulisic’s future for next season into doubt.)
If Pulisic wasn’t talking about his scoring drought, the football world most certainly was. “If I’m in his shoes now, I’m very worried,” US men’s national team legend Landon Donovan told Fox Sports recently. “He’s going through a moment right now,” said Alexi Lalas, with unusual diplomacy, on the State of the Union podcast. In April, Allegri himself tried to explain Pulisic’s frustration, which was becoming evident in his body language on the field: “He’s a sensitive guy. The fact he doesn’t score affects him more.”
.png?trim=34,0,86,0&auto=webp&quality=75&width=1200 "My London: Trinny Woodall shares her secrets with cabbies, shops at Liberty and stays at Claridge’s")
I ask Pulisic, who wrote in his autobiography about having struggled with his mental health, including depression, during his time at Chelsea, what he thought Allegri meant. “Maybe some things translate differently. But I’m okay. At the end of the day, maybe [Allegri] doesn’t know everything about me,” he says. “I’m doing the best I can, and obviously I get frustrated when things aren’t going well. I think everyone does. I just try to work to make things right. That’s all I can do.”
Besides, Pulisic isn’t the only one that has been struggling. Since the last World Cup, the US men’s national team has been a mess. After the US was knocked out of that tournament by the Netherlands, former USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter was embroiled in a Bravo-worthy feud with the family of former teammate Claudio Reyna (their respective sons, Sebastian Berhalter and Gio Reyna, are on the current squad), controversially rehired, and then fired again after a disastrous Copa America in 2024. That result prompted Clint Dempsey to declare that “this is our golden generation, and it looks like we’re wasting it.” Under the new coach, Mauricio Pochettino — an Argentinean who previously managed Tottenham, PSG, and Chelsea — the team has shown spells of promise but leaked goals, most recently shipping five against Belgium and two to Portugal in pre-tournament friendlies. Any upside from its performances in the Gold Cup last summer was largely overshadowed by Pulisic’s decision to sit out the tournament for fitness reasons.
Although almost nobody seriously expects the US to win the World Cup, this tournament has been understandably billed as the opportunity of a lifetime for the men’s team to assert itself on the world stage, and perhaps even earn the adoration (or at least the attention) of an American public that until recently could at best be described as football-curious. But given all the recent challenges, instead of riding a wave of optimism into the opening match on the eve of the tournament, American fans are starting to wonder if the USMNT can even get out of their group.
If that sounds bleak, there are reasons to be hopeful. For one thing, while there is oversized pressure on Pulisic’s shoulders, the US has never had a squad better equipped to share the load. Pochettino’s World Cup roster is stocked with talent thriving at top European clubs — Weston McKennie at Juventus, Tyler Adams at Bournemouth, Folarin Balogun at Monaco — as well as familiar stars from the MLS and Liga MX. “Weston’s had another great season,” Pulisic says. “Balogun is scoring so many goals. Haji Wright was scoring so many goals. I mean, you can go on through the list, there’s some guys that are doing very well in big clubs. That just speaks for how far the game’s come.”
