Rock Bottom (Again) - Christian Pulisic Now Claims He Offered To Play The Last Two Games And Coaches Said No To Him, Fires Back At Landon Donovan's Criticism
If you have followed any of US Soccer the last couple of weeks you know that Christian Pulisic decided to sit out the Gold Cup for rest. It's not a tournament we take serious, we're sending a B team at best and you have a handful of guys not allowed to play due to the Club World Cup. All in all pretty stupid considering we also have the Nations League, but whatever, that's a different story.
The story turned into Pulisic sitting out, older guys calling him out for doing so, the US losing 4 matches in a row and everything going to hell. So naturally he hopped out a show today to defend himself, I guess? He tried explaining how he offered to play in the 2 friendlies but the coaching staff said no:
Not great! Not when you had the coaching staff seemingly throwing a shot at him for skipping the Gold Cup and Pulisic coming back and saying the coaching staff said no to playing the two friendlies. I get it's 2 matches vs a tournament, but why not at least offer to suit up in the Gold Cup if you're going to do this for the friendlies? No one is saying you had to play every minute of every game in the Gold Cup, but you can be on the roster, especially when this group needs someone that has some sort of experience.
Then there's the commitment part.
This I actually agree with Pulisic. He's always shown up for the USA until this moment. He got sent to the hospital after scoring a goal in the World Cup to get out of the group and played the next match. He's not typically someone who hides from playing and typically plays well for the USMNT.
What I do hate, besides the US getting its ass kicked 4 matches in a row, is this. Pulisic's dad coming out and trying to talk shit and now you have Tim Howard chiming in
Tim Howard is one of the greatest US Soccer players we've had. He's allowed to say whatever he wants in my eyes. He earned it. If you don't like it, fine, talk it out, but also listen to a guy like Howard. The fact of the matter is we are a year out of the World Cup that we're hosting and we're at rock bottom. Fans haven't felt like this since we lost to Trinidad and Tobago and missed out in 2018. We have losses all over the place, guys not playing for various reasons and now fighting between our current face and former faces of American soccer. Good times.