American football has been filled with players over the ages who have been excellent for club and country. Landon Donovan, Alexi Lalas, Clint Dempsey and the likes have made people in America chant ‘USA, USA!’ every 4 years at the World Cup. But USA has never managed to produce talent capable of going to Europe’s biggest clubs and shining there. And then there is Christian Pulisic from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The collectives forces that make up American soccer — fans, players, the federation, everyone — hope that Christian Pulisic turns out to be so good that there is no previous national teamer worthy of comparison.
Either way, United States head coach Bruce Arena has set the bar high for his precocious youngster, saying that Pulisic reminds him strongly of Landon Donovan, a star for USA and surely one of, if not the the greatest player that has ever donned the stars and stripes.
“In Landon we saw a player who had a tremendous career at both club and international levels, and Christian is just starting,” Arena said Thursday in his final press conference before the U.S. meets Honduras in a crucial World Cup qualifier at Avaya Stadium last month. “We don’t know what it’s going to look like 10 years down the road, but he certainly at this age reminds me a lot of Landon.”
The question of whether Pulisic is the next Donovan is an intriguing one. You can easily see how Arena draws the comparison. The 18-year-old and the freshly retired Donovan are of similar size and build, with a swift turn of pace and a level of comfort on the ball not typically seen in American players.
The young Donovan had a fearless explosiveness that Pulisic has developed over his time in Germany with Borussia Dortmund, and has occasionally had opportunity to exploit with the national team.
“(Donovan) is an idol of mine,” Pulisic says. “It is obviously an honor, but I’m my own player as well, so I’m just trying to do it for me.”
Yet while Donovan belongs squarely in the discussion when considering the best American players of all time, there is a sense that this country’s soccer fans wish for even more from Pulisic.
Donovan managed 157 national team appearances and is the program’s all-time record goal-scorer with 57, with as many goals (five) in World Cups as legends like Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane and Romario. He won six MLS Cups, two final MVP awards, and has the league’s MVP trophy named in his honor.
However, there has never been a United States player who has become an integral part of a major European powerhouse. Dortmund is just that, the second biggest club in Germany and a quarterfinalist in this year’s Champions League. And Pulisic is right there in the mix, growing in confidence, gaining the respect and trust of his esteemed club-mates, and with a real chance to become a major contributor at the club.
Such things are not common for players so young in the upper echelons of European soccer, not even for German players in the Bundesliga, English players in the EPL and so on.
A recent poll by Goal.com named Pulisic as the third-best under-19 player in the world, and he is in a prime spot to continue to improve.
At Dortmund, he has landed at a welcoming club determined to nurture its young players. When Donovan, at a similar time of life, went to Bayer Leverkusen in Germany, he found the environment hostile and never settled.
Coming back to the United States and finding great success with the Los Angeles Galaxy was surely the right thing to do at that point, though there were many who wished he’d tried his hand again overseas — permanently rather than with one ill-fated loan spell at Bayern Munich and two impressive ones with Everton.
As much as the leading American players have gravitated back to MLS in recent years, often for more money than they were making in Europe, there is no hurried desire to see Pulisic over here apart from on U.S. duty.
At least not for a long time yet. When Tim Howard returned and headed to Colorado at the end of a long and distinguished stint in Europe, he did so having excelled at a high level for more than a decade. When Brad Guzan swapped unfashionable and struggling EPL team Middlesbrough for new MLS team Atlanta United, it was again seen as a positive.
But if Pulisic heads here any time soon it will be seen in some ways as a disappointment, because while there is no shame in coming home, with MLS growing apace, no one does so if they are a leading light at one of Europe’s biggest and best clubs.
In that sense Pulisic has a shot at something even more remarkable than the fact he is so proficient at just 18, an opportunity to occupy rarefied air and uncharted waters for an American.
A lot needs to go right for it to happen, but it is the way in which he could potentially surpass Donovan, to the benefit of American soccer.