The Curious Case of Christian Pulisic: From American Phenom to USMNT Outcast
When Mauricio Pochettino announced his U.S. men’s national team roster for the upcoming fall friendlies, there was one glaring absence: Christian Pulisic.
The 27-year-old, now fully fit after suffering a microfracture at the 2026 World Cup, will have to watch from home while his fellow countrymen take on Peru, Chile, Mexico and Canada in the newly combined September-October international break.
It’s becoming a familiar feeling for Pulisic. Whether it be from fitness woes, a desire to rest or merely a manager’s decision, the forward is making less and less appearances for the Stars and Stripes. His decline in red, white and blue has also coincided with his decline at AC Milan.
Suddenly, the player who was once labeled as the “future” of the USMNT is now struggling to even be a part of the team’s present. How has Pulisic fallen so far out of favor at both the club and international level?
It All Started at the 2025 Gold Cup
A wealth of USMNT stars skipped the 2025 Gold Cup, but no one has been haunted by the decision quite like Pulisic. The American opted against playing in last summer’s tournament, prioritizing rest ahead of the 2025–26 season and the World Cup.
It was just another moment that called Pulisic’s commitment to the Stars and Stripes into question. Instead of trying to build chemistry under a new manager, adapt new tactics and represent the national team, the player labeled “Captain America” failed to show up—literally.
It created a rift between Pulisic and Pochettino, who reiterated time and time again he only wants players fully committed to the badge. The Argentine made an even bigger statement when he ignored Pulisic’s request to play friendlies against Türkiye and Switzerland before the Gold Cup.
“I did speak with the coaches, and I asked, and I wanted to be a part of the team in whatever capacity I could, and they said no,” Pulisic said.
Suddenly, the face of the USMNT, a player notoriously composed and bland in interviews, was throwing Pochettino under the bus in an attempt to clear his name following the backlash of his Gold Cup absence.
“I didn’t understand it, but it is what it is. I wanted to be a part of that, but that’s just the way things went, and I had to make the best decision for myself and also in the long run for my team, even though clearly some people haven’t seen it that way,” Pulisic added.
The Highs and Lows of 2025–26
At first, Pulisic’s decision to skip the 2025 Gold Cup looked to have paid off. The forward got his 2025–26 campaign off to a career-best start, recording 10 goals and two assists before the calendar flipped to 2026. After the extra rest, he was firing at an all-time high.
Pulisic seemingly buried the hatchet with Pochettino as well, earning call ups to the September and October 2025 international breaks. Even an injury hiccup wasn’t enough to mar an exceptional few months from the American.
Then, everything spiraled out of control after the holiday season. Pulisic went 20 games without finding the back of the net for AC Milan in the back half of 2025–26. He lost his starting spot in the XI, and only salvaged the campaign with three assists before it ended.
Pulisic failed to produce for the USMNT as well, coming up blank in the March international window. Suddenly the player who skipped the Gold Cup to be in the best form of his life for the World Cup was, in fact, in the worst form of his life.
It looked like Pulisic turned the page, though, when he bagged a goal and an assist for Senegal in an international friendly ahead of the summer’s showpiece event. He was once again at the heart of the action with an assist in the team’s World Cup opener against Paraguay, which ended in a 4–1 victory.
Then injury struck again, as did more woeful performances, and he ended the World Cup without a goal to his name in four appearances, completely upstaged by his teammates. For a team that embarked on a fairytale run, he individually was devoid of all magic.
For the first time in a long time, it made complete sense why Pulisic no longer wore the captain’s armband.
A Fall From Grace
The massive disappointment of falling flat in a World Cup on home soil followed Pulisic back to Milan, where he slowly recovered from the microfracture that limited him in North America. Except he soon found himself at the bottom of new boss Ruben Amorim’s pecking order.
Pulisic spent the first three games of the 2026–27 season as an unused substitute, wasting away on the bench. Amorim admitted the American was “upset at the moment because he has zero minutes.”
It was a meteoric fall from grace. Pulisic went from winning the Champions League with Chelsea and then becoming the main man at Milan to not even coming on as a substitute in the early stages of this season.
It mirrored his trajectory with the national team. Pulisic went from becoming the youngest USMNT goalscorer in the modern era at age 17 and the fastest USMNT player to record 50 goal contributions to not even getting called up for friendlies this fall.
Pochettino Twists the Knife
In typical Pochettino fashion, the manager danced around the question of why Pulisic was left off his roster for the first international action following the 2026 World Cup. But he said a lot without saying much of anything at all.
“After the World Cup, we started to change and to see and to analyze for the players, potential players for this camp,” Pochettino said. “Like always, I say, I think the 28 players that are going to be involved in these four games, for different circumstances, are the best players, or the players that we want to see, the ones to play that we want to work [with] and that’s it.
“Because I think it’s not a point that, now [in] the first camp of this new cycle, to start to explain why is one [player left out], why [it] is not another [player].”
It is clear that Pochettino does not view Pulisic as one of the best 28 players available for selection at the current moment, even though the forward finally made his season debut for Milan and bagged an assist along the way. At the very least, Pulisic is not a player the coaching staff want to see this fall.
There’s a major shift in culture happening at the USMNT, one that as of now, does not include the Pulisic.
