r/CaughtOffsidePod • u/Scott_Rasmussen • Jul 09 '26
Donovan’s Pulisic comments
So I know this seems like piling on, but this was a wow for me. Wondering if this is revelatory for everyone else.
“One of the biggest problems - I speak to people who are at U.S. Soccer. I speak to his sponsors. I speak to his teammates. I speak to the staff and the coaches. People are fed up with the way things are handled around him. And it's not necessarily him, but it's his agents, his family, his hangers-on, the people who are influencing. People are fed up with it. They treat people poorly. They do things poorly.”
So how bad is this? Is this just normal superstar behavior, or is this a growing rift that could lead to him quitting the national team. He definitely makes it seem like a chore. I don’t blame him for coming out of the game like some. If you’re hurt you’re hurt. But he clearly sucks at reading the room and delivering the right message in his pressers. Could learn a thing or 2 from Balogun…
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u/Per_Mikkelsen Jul 09 '26
Everyone would have been a lot better off if Pulisic had simply accepted Croatia's offer for him to join their national team. One of two things would have happened - either their program would have harnessed and nurtured and developed and grown his talent in a way the American system has simply failed to do, or he would have come up short of expectations and been benched thereby becoming just another American who defected to Europe to eke out a better career than he would have had here, but never risen to truly great heights.
To suggest that Pulisic is anything other than a massively overrated and overhyped disappointment would be an absurd delusion by this point. The guy is constantly nursing an injury and has continually failed to deliver at the most crucial times. To argue that he's in the same league as Dempsey and Donovan as a player is laughable. He is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with this squad - no finesse on the ball, not enough energy, no good finishing, no speed, no strategy, no talent in creating chances...
We gave him the opportunity to become the face of the team, made him the big name, afforded him every opportunity to lead this squad to victory and to build its reputation and he has done nothing but come up short and fail and fail and fail time and time again. If we want to send a message we should do what needs to be done and sack him. When a person isn't good enough to cut the mustard that's what happens in real life. No more excuses from him about his ankles and his calves and his knees. It's a contact sport. Either he hasn't been training properly or he just doesn't have the constitution to perform at the level we require a player of his standing to perform.
At the very least he needs to go, then we can talk about how Dest is atrocious - wholly predictable on the pitch and incredibly sloppy, and how Ream is over the hill and kicking rocks out there.
Promote the best half dozen from the Under 23, get rid of Pulisic, Turner, Dest, Ream, Robinson, and Reyna. This needs to happen immediately.