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There are three players in Serie A this season who have scored at least five goals without a penalty and created at least five assists. The first two: Marcus Thuram of Inter Milan and Paulo Dybala of Roma.
You know the third player because he’s the most outstanding American soccer player of all time and plays for the club with the second-biggest Champions League title of all time.
You can’t walk down the street without a stranger walking out a door, grabbing you by the arm and forcing you to watch a grainy video of Pulisic lending a hand to Ruben Loftus-Cheek against Bologna or his goal against Sassuolo.
Delis are naming sandwiches after him. Tattoo artists across the United States are quitting in protest over having to spend their days iterating on some version of a “CP10” design. Your grandmother figured out how to not only use her television, but how to download, sign up for and then navigate the Paramount+ app in order to watch Christian Pulisic play in Serie A.
Just kidding, so I don’t cry. Somehow, Pulisic is in the midst of the most productive season of his professional career, for one of the biggest clubs in the world, and it seems like he’s flying under the radar. So what motivated Pulisic’s revitalization? And, more importantly, for Milan and U. S. men’s national team enthusiasts, will he be able to keep the momentum going?
Simply put, Pulisic has been one of the most productive and productive strikers in Serie A this season. Among players who have played at least 1,200 minutes, he ranks fifth in the league in terms of consistent offensive contributions per 90 minutes (without penalties). Objectives and assists):
For context, here are a few players outside of Italy that Pulisic has beaten with the same criteria so far this season: Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo, Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski, Manchester City’s Phil Foden, Arsenal’s Julian Alvarez and Bernardo Silva, Arsenal’s Gabriel. Jesús, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli.
In Italy, he has been more productive than the two star duos – Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia – who led Napoli to a name in Serie A just a year ago. Also, unlike the four players who precede him on the Serie A roster, Pulisic is not a striker. Given that he starts deeper on the field and theoretically wants to do more than just score goals, those numbers look even more impressive.
If we take a step back in the chain of possession, Pulisic’s spin doesn’t burn out either. FBref has created a statistic called “goal creating moves” that define as such the two offensive moves that lead to a goal. , and “this includes live ball passes, set piece passes, successful dribbles, shots leading to a goal, another shot and a foul. “In other words, it’s a way of praising players who were involved in a goal but possibly wouldn’t have made the pass that led directly to the goal. The only Serie A players with more goal-scoring moves than Pulisic’s 12 this season are Thuram. (15) and his Inter Milan teammate Henrikh Mkhitaryan (13).
To tie it all together, there are only 10 players across Europe’s “Big Five” top leagues so far this season who’ve scored at least six non-penalty goals and generated at least 12 goal-creating actions.
In the Premier League, it’s Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Darwin Núñez, Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins, and Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon. There’s no one in Ligue 1, and just one in LaLiga: Villarreal’s Alexander Sorloth. In Germany, there are three: Bayern Munch’s Leroy Sané and the Bayer Leverkusen duo of Alex Grimaldo and Victor Boniface. In Serie A, there are only two: Thuram and Pulisic.
In today’s football, the trendy winger has to do two things: score goals and his team generate the ability to score goals. Each express end is inclined toward one pole or the other. Kylian Mbappé is at one extreme – more commonly aim, aim and more goals – while Bukayo Saka is at the other. Pulisic’s most productive edition is right in the middle: fairly equal portions scoring goals and his teammates scoring goals. We have seen this edition of Pulisic so far this season, but it is unlikely that he will continue in the same form.
In terms of goals, Pulisic scored six goals out of 3. 7 expected goals, or xG. Despite his power in front of goal this season, he has scored 1. 7 fewer goals than expected since the start of the 2017-18 season. An outstanding finisher, and there are few reasons why he’s suddenly becoming one. This year, he’s attempted seven shots with an xG rate of 0. 14 or better, and he’s made four.
Here’s a map of all his shots this season: the bigger the circle, the higher the xG generated through the shot:
Not only has Pulisic turned his own shots into goals at a super high rate, but his teammates have converted his passes into goals just as efficiently. He’s generated 3.0 expected goals assisted, but his teammates have turned them into five goals.
As you can see, two of his assists came through passes made inside the box:
The same thinking applies to his goal-scoring moves. By observing all the shot-making moves, Pulisic helped generate 50 attempts for his teammates. That’s tied for 34th in the league despite those moves that led to 12 goals, the third-most in the league. Pulisic’s involvement in the game has resulted in an unusually high number of goals this season. Otherwise, your overall participation in the game decreases in almost each and every major area.
Here’s a selection of some of his top-line metrics at Chelsea, per 90 minutes, compared to his first season in Milan:
If Pulisic possessed an elite skill before arriving in Milan, it’s his movement off the ball. This shows in all his touches inside the box with Chelsea, and we all saw it in his winning goal against Iran in the World Cup as well:
His overall number of touches is about the same as they were at Chelsea — just slightly down from 50-per-90 minutes to 48.3-per-90 at Milan — but he just hasn’t been as involved in the most dangerous area of the field as often. He’s not pushing the ball forward as much, he’s not taking as many players on, and he’s not shooting as much as he used to.
In a backward way, Pulisic’s season has gone under the radar because all of the shots are going in. If his chances and his teammates’ chances were being converted at a normal rate, USMNT fans would be able to have their favorite kind of conversation: Do we need to worry about this American soccer star?
Normally, I’d say “yes.” Pulisic’s underlying production — the 0.41 non-penalty xG+xA per 90 — ranks tied for 198th among all players in Europe’s “Big Five” leagues who have appeared in at least one-third of their team’s minutes. In Serie A, he’s tied for 25th.
Brilliant? But if you think that he is a forward in one of the most productive groups in Italy, the 25th position turns out to be the minimum for a starter in his position.
Also, it’s not like I’ve seen a bunch of throw-ins around the penalty area that didn’t turn into shots or chances created. Twenty-six other Serie A players have registered more touches inside the penalty area. , he is 24 years old. He’s supposed to be in his prime and will join a less competitive league – two points that, in theory, deserve his performance. Instead, things went in the opposite direction.
And yet, I don’t think it’s time to panic. At Phillips he receives more progressive passes than at Chelsea (9. 3 in 90 minutes, compared to 8. 6). It’s a sign that he’s still able to locate dangerous spaces. Windows for players to pass the ball to him, even if he hasn’t been inside the box as he has in the past.
The most sensible thing about this is that their overall contribution to Milan’s ownership game is underestimated through some of those more fundamental numbers. In December, I wrote about a statistic called “Expected Possession Value,” or PEFP. Basically, it analyzes each and every action on the ball per game and calculates how much a team’s chances of scoring a goal increase or decrease in the next 10 seconds.
For Milan, Rafael Leão leads the EPV with 0. 21 per 90 minutes. In other words, their moves have a 21% chance of scoring in a 90-minute match. Pulisic is not far behind, valuing the team’s moment with 0. 18. EPV of 90.
These are all of Pulisic’s open-play passes that have increased Milan’s goal probability by at least 5%:
Along with Leao and midfielder Tijjani Reijnders, Pulisic is one of Milan’s top three players in terms of generating harmful ownership. And that’s for a team that is second in the league for goals not penalized and expected goals.
In addition, playing time is more important to Pulisic this season than his performance. He has not played more than 1,800 minutes in a league season since turning 18 with Borussia Dortmund in the 2017-18 season. He played 75 minutes per year with one hundred of the minutes that year. , and has 74 per cent minutes for Milan this season. However, in the five years since, it has never exceeded 51% minutes. Pulisic simply hasn’t been a full-time starter in European football for six years. Now, he recovers as such themes more than his underlying production.
And then, for USMNT enthusiasts in particular, Pulisic’s performances with the national team seem to have nothing to do with his club’s form. In a rather turbulent 2023 with his club’s situation, Pulisic scored six goals and added 3 assists in 8 international matches for his country. The previous year, 2022, had probably been the worst year of his professional career, and yet at the World Cup he was fantastic.
Based on a handful of complex and fundamental statistics, FBref calculates the maximum of 10 similar players within a festival for each player. For Pulisic, at the World Cup, the third top player similarly, the ultra-hopeful German Jamal Musiala. Second is Brazilian Vinicius Junior, perhaps the most productive left-back in the world. And first? Kylian Mbappé, perhaps the most productive player in the world.
After that, well. . . I guess I won’t be too enthusiastic about some goals and assists in Serie A either.