At the start of the 2025-26 Serie A campaign, United States men’s national team star Christian Pulisic was in the form of his career, recording 10 goals and 3 assists in his first 15 appearances for AC Milan.
“You could make the argument that in the first half of the Serie A season, he was the best player in the league,” FOX Sports soccer analyst Alexi Lalas said.
However, since the turn of the calendar year, Pulisic hasn’t logged a single goal for Milan despite maintaining his spot in Massimiliano Allegri’s starting lineup, and he hasn’t scored for the United States since November 2024.
Pulisic’s drastic dip in form comes at an inopportune time for the U.S., which will co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer with Pulisic as its leading man. The question now, with just over a month until the start of the tournament, is: which version of Pulisic will the U.S. get: the one from the first half of the European season or the one that came in at No. 79 in FOX Sports’ ranking of the Top 100 World Cup players.
“It’s the Christian that was in the first half of the season,” FOX Sports analyst Maurice Edu argued. “And I say it’s that Christian because, when you look at his body of work, both for club and country, he’s like so many American players where he constantly has to reinvent himself and show up and prove himself every time he’s moved clubs, every time he’s been tasked with a different challenge.
“His response to everything that happened in the summer with the national team is a reflection of who he really is.”
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Pulisic, in a controversial decision, decided to sit out of the 2025 Gold Cup, which was the United States’ final competitive international window before the World Cup. He made his national team return in September window and picked up an assist in the Americans’ 2-0 win over Japan.
Since then, Pulisic hasn’t been able to leave his mark on the U.S. men’s national team, notably being held scoreless in the United States’ two high-profile friendlies against Belgium and Portugal, in which they conceded a combined seven goals and only scored two.
Following the loss to Portugal, U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said that he thinks that his roster lacks a player in “that top 100,” which FOX Sports analyst Stu Holden doesn’t agree with.
“Christian Pulisic, on his day, is a top-100 player, for sure,” Holden said. “I don’t know if Pochettino was referencing in the moment, right now, but like a lot of these players, these guys are going to have dips in form.
“I feel good about him at 79.”
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But Holden also recognizes that there is a sizable gap between Pulisic and the elite players from around the world, and not for lack of ability.
“On talent alone, Christian Pulisic is a top-40 player in the world,” Holden said. “But what separates that level of player from the very, very best — the Messis, the Ronaldos, the Mbappés — is that they don’t suffer as much from the mental aspect of the game when they go through these big dips. Their dips are smaller, but they’re still very elite.
“Even his coach, Allegri, came out and said that he’s a sensitive player, and he wears the weight of when he doesn’t score and all of these different things.”
[Lalas Reacts To Allegri’s Remarks: ‘Last Thing You Want to Be Called’]
Pulisic has three matches left in the Serie A campaign, plus a pair of World Cup warm-up matches against Senegal and Germany, to get back on track before the United States’ World Cup opener against Paraguay on June 12.
“I’m not concerned about Christian Pulisic,” Lalas added. “I think he’s going to bring it. As I said, you don’t want to be called sensitive because what people think when you’re called sensitive is that you’re soft.”
“He will get back to that point,” Edu added. “It just takes that one goal to get that door open again and let him walk through it again and he’ll be the guy that we need him to be.”
