Few players in United States men’s national team history should be more comfortable with high expectations than Christian Pulisic.
The 25-year-old AC Milan star has been asked to be the club’s been attacker since he was one of the only players to show up in the nation’s astounding failure in Couva during 2018 World Cup qualifying.
And more often than not, he’s delivered the goods, often smiling or at least smirking — Can we call him The Big Smirk? — in red, white, and blue.
While Landon Donovan and Freddy Adu have also lived with huge expectations at tender ages and Donovan eventually emerged a national team legend, no American player in history has consistently shown up under the spotlight than the man from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
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In fact, only the treatment table has stopped Pulisic and he — knock on wood — conquered that piece of furniture with a career year this season at Milan.
Pulisic only missed two games for i Rossoneri this season, where Stefano Pioli called his name 50 times for a total of 3,611 minutes. And it wasn’t just health but also wealth for Pulisic, who has entered his prime and boasted 16 goals and 10 assists during his first season at the San Siro.
The goals, minutes, and appearances set new career-highs while the assists trail only his 2016-17 breakout season at Dortmund for single-season highs.
Now Pulisic enters Copa America in good health and form with the coach of his choosing and friends all around him. He’ll be under the microscope like he’s been since T&T and even before that, as will pals Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, and Tyler Adams.
You know what? He’ll be comfortable there, and there is almost no reason to believe the Yanks won’t cruise through 180 minutes and be playing for the group come matchday 3 and Uruguay.
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There’s the rub of this tournament of expectations for Pulisic and the USMNT. If they show up humble and motivated they should cook Bolivia and Panama. And they stand a chance against Uruguay for the right to (probably) avoid Brazil in the quarterfinals.
ALL of the above should be a given, especially considering Berhalter seems to have learned from his World Cup naivete of telling a young phenom he won’t play much and starting a center forward without World Cup experience in a knockout round game against the Netherlands.
This USMNT crew has been through it all, and expectations will neither surprise nor bother them. In fact, while many might predict the Yanks to go 2-0, fall to Uruguay and then bow out to Brazil, no one’s expecting them to fail to arrive on the stage with the proper expectations.
Rather, in an amazing turnabout from just a few years ago, it would be more surprising if the Yanks flame out than if they made another semifinal run. Think about that.
It all comes back to Pulisic, a player with the potential to take the prime of his career and not just live up to the billing but further himself as a national icon. He’s the right combination of phenomenal talent base (Landon Donovan), stubborn belief (Clint Dempsey), and big-stage comfort (Tim Howard) to become the top player in United States men’s national team history.
Now that’s not quite an expectation but it’s a possibility. It’s certainly not going to scare Pulisic, who looks like a man for these times. If he’s got a few more like him in the group — and we’d bet he does — anything can happen in the next month.
It’s a lot less “Why not us?” than “Why it’s us.” And that’s awesome.
