In one year and 16 days, the United States men’s national team will take the field at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to begin the first domestic World Cup in a generation. It is coming fast, and it honestly feels like too fast at this point in the USMNT’s development.
There isn’t anything that has gone right for the national team since the last World Cup ended in Qatar, with the possible exception of the man hired to extinguish this three-year-old conflagration. Mauricio Pochettino has lots to repair and little time to do it, and much that is outside his control is impeding his work.
This includes the absence of star forward Christian Pulisic for this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup, but the impact of his decision to rest in the next six weeks rather than join the USMNT this summer is being exaggerated because of his standing within the program.
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It’s happening again. American soccer is tormenting American soccer’s best male player for choosing to prioritize his health in order to facilitate remaining American soccer’s best male player into the future. And Pulisic is being treated as harshly for focusing on his fitness for the coming season – and the actual World Cup – in the same way as Landon Donovan when he took a four-month mental health break at the start of 2013.
And let’s not lose sight of the fact it was not Pulisic who ordained the Gold Cup to be a second-class tournament this summer. That came from FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, which is launching an expanded Club World Cup in the United States this summer and declared participating organizations did not have to release players for national team competitions. USMNT regulars Timothy Weah and Weston McKennie of Italy’s Juventus and midfielder Gio Reyna of Germany’s Borussia Dortmund will be with their clubs and not available to Pochettino.
MORE: Breaking down USMNT's roster for Gold Cup
Without those three and star left back Jedi Robinson, who will be missing as he tries to recover from injury, as well as midfielder Yunus Musah absent for “personal reasons”, the national team already is without half of its customary starting lineup.
Under these circumstances, the value of Pulisic’s participation is substantially diminished. After the United States had played so miserably at last summer’s Copa America and even worse in the CONCACAF Nations League in March, the Gold Cup was understandably viewed by analysts as an opportunity to build toward a successful formula in advance of next summer’s World Cup. That’s not possible now, with or without Pulisic.
There are windows for friendly competition in September, October and November, and then again in March 2026. If you want to build chemistry, that’s when it’ll need to happen. That’s the reality of the USMNT’s circumstance.
BONN: Sitting Christian Pulisic for Gold Cup is misstep for USMNT
In his second year at AC Milan, Pulisic completed a second consecutive season of more than 2,400 minutes played. That’s more league soccer than he played in the previous four seasons combined, all with Chelsea FC. And, in 2024-25, he played another 1,149 minutes in cup games with Milan. Starting last June, Pulisic played 664 minutes with the USMNT in the Copa America, fall friendlies and the Nations League. That’s 4,291 total in a calendar year – the equivalent of 48 soccer games.
According to Opta, Pulisic is one of 10 outfield players in the top five EuropeanLeagues to appear in at least 50 games the past two seasons. This is someone who frequently injured during his time in the Premier League, so much so there were some who speculated he'd never be consistently healthy as a pro soccer player.
At that level, the multiple-choice question becomes pretty simple:
Do you want Pulisic:
A) At his best for the World Cup next summer?
B) Available to join primarily reserve players in the Gold Cup?
There is a similarity to Donovan making himself unavailable at the start of 2013, when MLS was in preseason but the USMNT were starting their second stage of World Cup qualifying. Donovan missed the team’s first two World Cup qualifiers that year before returning to the roster and helping to assure qualification for Brazil 2014.
He said at the time: “We have a sort of stigma that being in a difficult mental place is not acceptable. We should 'pull ourselves up by the bootstraps' and 'fight through it,' and all this, and it's a little peculiar to me, that whole idea, that if someone's physically hurt, we're OK with letting them take the time they need to come back, but if someone's in a difficult time mentally, we're not OK with letting them take the time they need to come back. Hopefully, there's at least a few people out in the world that can relate to this and can somewhat be inspired.”
Pulisic’s circumstance is more about managing physical drain. It’s unlikely he will receive the same punishment Donovan apparently did for his decision: The following June, after Donovan had returned and scored the clinching goal in the decisive qualifier against Mexico, he was left off the World Cup roster.
Pulisic will be there in LA a year from now. And he’ll be in the lineup, so long as he is healthy. Taking this break offers no guarantees, but does make it more likely.