Christian Pulisic returns to face Borussia Dortmund tonight for the first time as an opponent, and his four-year story with the German side has a lot to unpack.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) recall that it was about ten years ago that the winger was there to play in the U17 World Cup with the United States. His name was already doing the rounds among scouts, but Borussia Dortmund had their eye on Haji Wright, star of the Los Angeles Galaxy.
They had sent a couple of observers to the stands to closely study that talented boy with his excellent dribbling, unaware that they would return to Dortmund with the chess-obsessed genius.
The love story between Pulisic and BVB began like this, almost by chance, and ended with a check for €60m that arrived from Chelsea. Today Pulisic no longer plays like he played at 17, a cocktail of instinct and speed, but he has learned to put his intelligence at the service of the team.
So far he has scored three goals for Milan. Two with his left foot coming in a central area, and the other with a powerful right-footed shot in the old fashioned way. Pulisic is smiling again after a couple of complicated years.
Dario Scuderi, his former team-mate in the youth sector, spoke about the day he rocked up at Dortmund training for the first time. In 2015 he won the U17 league, then made his debut in the Bundesliga after a dozen goals in the youth team.
At the time he was spoken of as one of the two greatest talents of his year, and the other was Kylian Mbappe. They will compete against each other in November.
For Pulisic it went differently: the move to Chelsea slowed down his growth, especially with some injury issues, because last year he scored just one goal in 30 appearances. Now he is recovering.
The ‘Yellow Wall’ will give him a big round of applause and it will be the first time he plays at Signal Iduna Park as an opponent. He arrived there aged 16 with his father Mark, a former indoor football player.
He accompanied him to training every day and watched his games without saying a word, almost hidden, as we saw on the occasion of the goal against Lazio. Christian learned German and endeared himself to his team-mates.
He made his debut in 2016, replacing Marco Reus. He scored his first goal at the age of 17 years and 212 days, making him the fourth-youngest scorer in the Bundesliga and the youngest foreign player to score in league history.
In those days he played everywhere: as a playmaker behind the striker and on both wings. Once they asked his father what his son’s secret was: “He never makes excuses. Many players are looking for an escape route, or perhaps justifications. Christian no.”
After a first season with 5 goals in 43 games, he responded to those who had pressed him about his age: “I’m tired of hearing people say I’m only 17. I feel like I can make my mark.”
In 2018, thanks to a brace against Benfica in the round of 16, he became the youngest Dortmund player to score a goal in the Champions League at 18 years and 5 months. At Signal Iduna Park he won the 2017 DFB-Pokal, coming on as a second-half substitute.
Thomas Tuchel summed it up like this: “He’s fast, intelligent, very quick. And he is in sublime physical shape. We’re talking about a wonderful combination of factors.”
Another who has always advocated him is Nuri Sahin: “When he gets the ball he is uncatchable.” His relationship with Tuchel deteriorated at Chelsea, and the feeling between the two slowly faded, amid injuries, long spells on the bench and criticism.
Pulisic left Dortmund in 2019 after 19 goals in 127 games. Compared to four years ago, several things have changed, others have not: the sporting director is Sebastian Kehl, his old captain, while the coach is Edin Terzic, Favre’s assistant in the last year before his farewell. Number 11 is still Marco Reus.
Chelsea is where great players go to have their careers stalled. This list of players who only reached their full potential only after leaving Chelsea is quite long, and include the likes of Mohammed Salah, Kevin de Bruyne, and Lukaku (twice).
It looks like Pulisic’s name is going to be added to that list.
An excess of money fueling an insatiable amount of buying of talented players combined with a “win now” attitude leading to constant turnover of the coaches, which started with Roman Abromovich, and has continued with the Todd Boehly era, is what has driven this sad tale of constant churning inside a shark tank.
While Marco Reus and others who played with Pulisic at Dortmund are still with the club in some capacity, NONE of the players who were with Pulisic in his first year, and all but one in his second year (Thiago Silva) at Chelsea are still there. They have all left.
“Lukaku (twice)” – I literally was laughing out loud. As they say “it’s funny cause it’s true”. So true.
Also: a key part of why Pulisic was able to get so good is that he joined Dortmund when he was still only 15 years old, thus escaping the poverty of top level advanced coaching that still exists in the US for older players.
Pulisic’s father managed to get him a Croatian passport because of a Croatian grandfather – this circumvented EU/UEFA rules governing the age in which a foreign national could join any club within the EU. Without this EU passport, he would have had to wait until age 18 to join Dortmund
2015-18 Dortmund was great to watch. I enjoyed that time. Reus, Puli, Kagawa, Weigl, Gotze, Blasc, Dembele, Auba,.Piscek, Hummels (the good version lol) sorry I’m butchering the names….pace for days lol 😂 😂 FIFA players loved them 😁