English soccer has featured successful Americans before Christian Pulisic joined Chelsea. Tim Howard performed more than a decade of first-class work as a goalkeeper for Everton after a stint at Manchester United, and Brad Friedel recorded 450 network league appearances for Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur.
Higher up the field, Clint Dempsey scored 72 goals for Fulham and Tottenham, while Brian McBride could have done something similar with the same opportunities; He scored 41 times in England despite not playing his first full season there until age 32. Carlos Bocanegra was a rock on Fulham’s back for five seasons, and Claudio Reyna made more than 100 appearances for Sunderland and Manchester City.
However, at 21, McBride and Friedel had yet to make their professional debut, Dempsey and Bocanegra were just starting out in MLS, and Howard was a backup for the New York / New Jersey MetroStars. Reyna and USMNT top scorer Landon Donovan had signed with Bayer Leverkusen at that age, but Reyna was preparing for his debut, and Donovan was on loan in the United States.
Simply put, there is no American comparison to what Pulisic is achieving in the world’s most lucrative soccer league. We have to extend the network more widely.
– ESPN Daily Podcast: Pulisic’s is America’s First World Star.
– Pulisic Watch: follow-up to their debut season in England
– Karlsen: Pulisic among the best under 21s in the world.
– ESPN +: Stream Pulisic in FA Cup semifinals (July 19) | FC Daily
Walking through the field
Let’s create a specific type of attacker from a group of players made up of everyone in the five major leagues in Europe. He needs to have played at least 1,000 minutes this season, averaged at least 55 touches for 90 minutes, attempted 35 passes, and took seven touches in the opponent’s penalty area.
With that criterion alone, we only have 14 players. They are diverse talents, boys very involved both in the distribution of the ball and in the direct attack; Players like Lionel Messi from Barcelona, Neymar from PSG and Kylian Mbappe, Raheem Sterling from Man City and Riyad Mahrez.
Now let’s take this a little bit further and make our player a solid passer (completion rate of at least 80%) with a better-than-average nose for goal (at least 0.4 goals per 90). Let’s also make sure he’s involved in team defense by averaging at least 3.7 turnovers for every 90.
We now have five: Neymar, Josip Ilicic, the star of Atalanta’s last bloom, and three of the Premier League’s best wingers: Mahrez, Sadio Mane of Liverpool, four players at least 28 years old who have already spent their athletic athletes, and Pulisic, a 21-year-old American in his first Premier League campaign.
This set of specifications, while conveniently specific, focuses on a certain type of star. David Silva accomplished this combination for pre-Pep Guardiola Man City in 2014-15; Franck Ribery did it for Bayern Munich twice; and Sterling and Leroy Sane have accomplished in recent years for Guardiola in Man City. Ribery and Silva were much more involved in ball pressure than Pulisic, and Neymar certainly scores more goals. But none played at this level at Pulisic’s age.
Pulisic has had to adapt at Chelsea
Pulisic arrived at Stamford Bridge from Borussia Dortmund last summer, a January transfer that stayed in Germany for the remainder of the season to help with the BVB Bundesliga title search. (Two points were missing). He debuted at BVB at age 17 in the 2015-16 season and became a mainstay of the team the following year, primarily on the right wing. Let’s take a closer look:
His first two full seasons were quite positive, as expected for a teenager. It was used in advanced positions in 2016-17, trying more risky passes but receiving many touches in the box; In 2017-18, he sat further back, improving his completion rate but seeing fewer goal and assist opportunities.
In 2018-19, Pulisic flourished for a dramatically improved BVB despite a series of muscle injuries and increased competition from players like Jadon Sancho. After playing at least 1,500 league minutes in the previous two seasons, Pulisic only recorded 923, but in which he thrived.
At the end of his time in Germany, Pulisic had combined the attack numbers from his first full season with the ball advance numbers from his second. During that season in the Bundesliga, only four players averaged at least 0.35 goals per 90 and 0.35 attends over 900 minutes: Sancho, Pulisic, Mario Gotze of BVB and Sebastien Haller of Eintracht Frankfurt, who moved to West Ham United for £ 45m last summer.
Life in the Premier League is exhausting. There are four more games than in the Bundesliga and the teams do not have a month-long winter break. Pulisic again had to fight to play on a roster loaded with young talent, and it took him a while to carve out a spot for himself. In addition, he dealt with another round of muscle injuries; He still had to play in 2020 before the pandemic coronavirus strike.
In addition to that, he was asked to cover a lot more ground for Chelsea, and on the opposite side of the field. Your heatmap touches for 2019-20:
“At first, it wasn’t always easy,” Pulisic told ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle in January, “and I wasn’t always in the lineup, but I kept working. I put my head down and kept telling myself, ‘My time will come.'” .
And he did. Once he began to find a constant rotation time, Pulisic started producing.
Carlisle and other ESPN writers have rated Pulisic’s performances on a scale of 1 to 10 (first half of the season and second half). After averaging 5.7 in August and September, he scored 7.0 in October and November, then retreated to 5.8 in December. Before Tuesday’s game against Norwich City, he had averaged a 7.5 since the league restarted last month.
Pulisic has been an integral part of Chelsea’s attack. His attendance numbers have dropped from his last season with BVB, but he’s averaging more innings and consequently more goals. Combine that with a higher pass completion rate and, injury aside, you have a solid and unique debut campaign.
Projected in more than 38 games, it is a rhythm of 17 goals and 6 assists. Including your BVB goals, you will exceed Dempsey’s European total in a couple of years.
Who are the companions of Pulisic?
Of course, it hasn’t proven incredibly long-lasting yet; There is nothing that says what it is noBut the sample size must grow quite a bit before we know in one way or another. Still, it’s clear that Pulisic has made the transition from “incomparable to any past American perspective” to “incomparable to any previous American Pro“Quite easily. So if we’re tracking both their potential and their progress, we have to raise the bar for the comparison group.”
Let’s go back to the other two elite extremes in the reduction exercise above: Mahrez and Mane. Pulisic’s rate stats aren’t all that great this season, though they’re pretty comparable to Mane.
However, once again, Mahrez is 29, and Mane is 28. They are finished or close products. So what if we compared something similar and looked at the latest elite wingers in their Premier League debut seasons or, in Sterling’s case, in his 21-year campaign?
This is an incredibly aspirational group, and Pulisic’s stats don’t match. Still, he’s a more stable (or perhaps safer) passer than some, while his recent streak of goals has made him the most successful scorer in the group. Also, his offensive stats are superior to Sterling’s and remain terribly similar to Mane’s, despite Mane being older (22) when he moved from Red Bull Salzburg to Southampton. That comparison will never be friendly to Pulisic.
How can Pulisic improve further?
There are two clear opportunities for growth to advance. Pulisic’s attendance averages, although quite close to most of the list, lag far behind those of Philippe Coutinho and Eden Hazard. Pulisic is more of a catcher than a passer, despite his assist for Olivier Giroud against Norwich, but many of the players on this list became both.
Even more remarkable, however, is the last column: ball recoveries. These are basically loose ball collections, and are pretty good indications of how close a player is to the ball and how involved he is in defensive pressure.
Each of the six non-Pulisic wingers averaging at least 4.7 recoveries per 90, at 6.9, Mahrez was a demolition ball out of doors with Leicester City, and the highest average Pulisic has enjoyed up to the date is 4.0, two years ago in Dortmund.
We know that his anticipation and acceleration skills are delightful, as evidenced by his single-player goal against Man City last month. But either he’s not been asked to get as involved in pressure play or he’s just not been on the same level as elite players.
Still, Pulisic holds up pretty well compared to some of the top wingers, and with Chelsea adding some amazing attack pieces for next season: RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner, Ajax’s Hakim Ziyech have already been signed, he will have opportunities to improve those goal and assist numbers. With the midfield and lack of defense compared to the attack, Chelsea could probably also use as many turnovers as it can handle.
Both the present and the future are brighter for Pulisic than for any previous American player.
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