The son of two football fans, Pulisic has been able to bring the tradition of the circle of relatives. The 20-year-old learned the basics of the game in his hometown of Hershey, Pennsylvania, and when his circle of relatives moved to England for a year, he played for Brackley Town at the age of seven.
“A lot of other people still don’t realize that my fondness for the game has woken up,” Pulisic told the Daily Mail. ‘I started loving him so much and said, ‘Wow. I’m pretty good! I think I can do anything with this game. »
Longer periods at home with Michigan Rush and PA Classics have grown Pulisic’s love for sport, but it’s in Germany that he has world-class talent. The American teenager made a giant leap into Europe in February 2015, and a European passport received through a Croatian grandfather facilitated his stopover in Dortmund.
See: Christian Pulisic: Made in Bundesliga
“Thanks to my dual nationality, I have been able to play in Europe, education at the Academy in Dortmund, from the age of 16,” Pulisic explained in an article for The Players ‘ Tribune in November 2017.
“Without that, I would have had to wait until I was 18. And for a footballer, years are everything. From a progression point of view, it’s almost like this ideal place, where a player’s expansion and abilities intersect, precisely the right path, where a player can make his biggest leap forward in progression.”
It didn’t take long for Pulisic’s apparent ability to show up at the youth point in Germany, and in January 2016 Dortmund had the nervous winger ready for his Bundesliga debut. Then, at 17, he came here as a replacement in a 2-0 win over Ingolstadt, and he temporarily followed with some others who came here by the time he faced the UEFA Europa League against Porto.
The teenager’s rise to the ladder proved as fast as his footwork, and his first Bundesliga match in February before being thrown deep by Revierderby opposite Schalke on April 10 of the same year. Pulisic lasted 73 minutes in the 2-2 draw, receiving a lot of applause from Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel.
“He’s a teenager in his first year of professional football,” Tuchel said on the club’s website. “His first two games in the opening lineup were in Leverkusen and here at Schalke, not the simplest task.
“It’s our immense thanks to seeing him as a full-time player on our team.”
Tuchel said the American “looks good” in his brief appearances so far, and that he will soon pay more for his coach’s faith. A week after Schalke’s match, Pulisic scored his first Bundesliga goal: scoring the first match in a 3-0 home win over Hamburg. At 17 years and 212 days, he was the youngest foreign goalscorer in league history.
Another effort opposed to VfB Stuttgart the following week made him the youngest player to score two Bundesliga goals, and Pulisic closed the 2015/16 crusade by breaking some other foreign record. Having captained the under-17 team at the 2015 World Cup, his goal in the 4-0 win of the senior team over Bolivia in May 2016 made him the youngest scorer of the USMNT in the fashion era.
The following season, records continued to collapse. In September 2016, Pulisic was the youngest to score with the United States in a FIFA World Cup qualifier and the youngest to score a double with his country.
That same month, he was able to see the UEFA Champions League for the first time, which allowed the youngest American player and the youngest player from Dortmund to compete in the largest club competition in Europe. He also analysed the title role on the right wing, picking up and casting a hand on a 6-0 hammer from Legia Warsaw in Poland. Two weeks later he arrived here as a substitute to identify the tie in the 2–2 draw with Real Madrid, European champions.
Between these two European relations, Pulisic had an unforgettable weekend. On the eve of his 18th birthday, he opened his account for the new season and had two assists in the 6-0 win over Darmstadt.
Video: Pulisic’s 3 Bundesliga goals
So it’s no wonder that in December, Dortmund’s rising star was named Young Athlete of the Year for Men’s Football 2016. He would also finish his first full crusade in the Bundesliga with a new and advanced contract, as well as an impressive total of 3 goals and 8 assists in 29 appearances.
In addition, Pulisic finished this season with cutlery. In the DFB Cup final in May 2017, he reached the break to upgrade the injured Marco Reus and won what proved to be the decisive penalty in Dortmund’s 2–1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt. Two months earlier, the 18-year-old had won another record, scoring against Benfica in the Champions League for the last 16 years to the youngest BVB goalscorer in this competition.
The goals continued to come at the start of the following season: Pulisic received one in a DFL Super Cup victory over Bayern Munich in August 2017 before winning again in the Bundesliga behind Hamburg and Wolfsburg.
A memorable winner following Hoffenheim in December 2017, the same month he was named The Men’s Football Year Athlete in 2017. He scored six goals and 4 assists for his country in the calendar year, and won the prize by winning a wholly 94% of the vote. No teenager had won this award before.
“It’s worth it, anything I’m very proud of,” Pulisic said. “It was a crazy trip.”
This roller coaster trip would continue in 2018/19, with the impressive Dortmund season almost culminating in the coronation of the German champion.
Pulisic celebrated its 20th anniversary with his 100th appearance for the club, achieving a breakthrough in the 1-0 win over Club Brugge in the Champions League. A succession of injury disorders hindered his influence in his senior year in Germany, but still finished with 4 goals and 4 assists in 20 league games and discovered the net twice in the DFB Cup.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without the club and your confidence to give young players a chance,” Pulisic wrote in an open letter to enthusiasts after his move in the summer of 2019 to Chelsea in January was shown. “It is an honor and a dream to shoot black and yellow in front of the Sedtribronene.”
The American then gladly signed on the record in his last home game for the club, a 3–2 win over Fortuna Dusseldorf on the penultimate day of the season.
“This is the stadium I’ve played in,” Pulisic told Ruhr Nachrichten before his last appearance at Signal Iduna Park. “I’m going to miss this atmosphere … but above all, I will miss the other people in Dortmund. These were the five years of my life.”
See Pulisic’s emotional farewell to Dortmund enthusiasts at Signal Iduna Park
This bankruptcy in the American’s history would end on a positive note, as he scored a goal for the 2018/19 Bundesliga finalist in a 2-0 win at Borussia Monchengladbach.
In all competitions, Pulisic has 19 goals and 26 assists in 127 matches for Die Schwarzgelben. In addition to wrapping a lifetime of memorable moments in his teens, he had also presented hope to a new generation of American players. Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Josh Sargent and Haji Wright are some of the names that followed their way in the Bundesliga.
“It’s the most complicated time of my life,” Pulisic told Ruhr Nachrichten, recalling his arrival in Dortmund. “I had to leave my family, my friends. He didn’t speak the language at all. Everything I brought with me to Germany is a dream.
Pulisic is living proof that the Bundesliga is a position in which dreams can – and come true.
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