By Adam Gibson | Copy Editor
Rarely does the world see a young, extremely talented soccer player come out of the United States; Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey are some of the more recent players to have had a great amount of success throughout their entire career. Christian Pulisic, however, is a player who is looking to become just as good if not better than Donovan or Dempsey as an American superstar.
Pulisic is just 18-years-old and plays for one of the top teams in the Bundesliga, the best league in Germany. In his club Borussia Dortmund, he is one of only four players ages 18 or younger and the youngest player with a start in all three games and one goal scored, according to ESPN FC. His skill shines with goals and assists and he continually surprises fans with how well he can pass the ball and how accurately he can shoot.
In 2015, he was anything but your average high school student athlete. Pulisic joined the Under-17 U.S. national team as a 16-year-old, where he started three games and scored one goal. However, his time with that team was cut short when his current club, Dortmund, began to notice the stellar quality at which he was playing.
He moved to Germany to play with the U-17 team for Dortmund and also was finished high school during his time there. Germany is one of the best places to go if you really want to learn how to play soccer because of the many great players that have played and come out of Germany: Franz Beckenbauer, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm, just to name a few.
These names are sacred to not only German soccer fans, but to soccer fans all over the world. Pulisic is playing in a league that creates extraordinary talent and is succeeding in doing so.
Now, not only is he playing for a top club in Germany, but he is also currently playing for the U.S. national team at the age of 18. With the World Cup coming up next summer in 2018, the national team is now playing to help the squad fight for a spot to have a chance to prove how skillful he actually can be.
Pulisic has started in eight of the 10 games he has played in for the US and is tied for the second-most goals on the team with five. He is also tied with the record-holder for most goals for the U.S. national team, Dempsey and behind another great, Jozy Altidore, who has six goals. Given the fact that Altidore has played in three more games than Pulisic, it is quite a feat for him to have so many goals in a team composed of top players from the United States.
On another level than any league across the globe is international play, where countries comprise teams of the best of the best from the country. He is now competing at two superior levels in soccer as a teenager. Pulisic will only grow from here as he is just at the beginning of his career and seems to be becoming the leader for the U.S. international squad.
As any soccer fan knows, major league soccer is full of less superstars than leagues such as the Premier League in England and the Bundesliga. When a player gets called over to one of those such leagues from the United States, it’s a big deal.
Just like Pulisic, Donovan played for the U-17 U.S. National team and then went to the Bundesliga to play for Bayer Leverkusen; however, Donovan did not play for them for long before he was sent to the MLS where he played for the San Jose Earthquakes and later, the L.A. Galaxy. While Donovan is considered to be one of the best players from America, he did not succeed in the Bundesliga but was rather sent back to play in the major leagues. Even though this was a different time, the skill in most leagues has not changed and just proves how difficult it has to be for an American player to succeed in this game.
Pulisic has succeeded where the game of soccer is sacred and where other extremely talented players could not. And not only is he succeeding, he is thriving. To see this out of such a young player is rare and his success in the Bundesliga shows that American soccer players can still compete at a high level around the world.
As an already top player in the most popular sport in the world, Pulisic has the ability to become not only the greatest player to ever play on the U.S. national team, but one of the greatest players in the world.
