Credit: First Things First
By Sam Neumann on

Christian Pulisic treated the ankle injury that ended his World Cup as an inconvenience, nothing more.

The USMNT star was helped off the field in the second half of Monday’s 4-1 Round of 16 loss to Belgium, and in his postgame interview with Fox’s Jenny Taft, he treated it as a minor footnote to a bad night.

“Yeah, I mean, I just twisted my ankle and just sprained my ankle,” Pulisic said. “I mean, it’s just frustrating to end like that, of course, but you know now I have time to rest, so hopefully it’ll be OK.”

That was the extent of Pulisic’s accounting for an exit that ended his tournament in the most consequential game of his career. Nick Wright spent a chunk of the next morning’s First Things First — which moved time slots due to the World Cup — explaining why that answer didn’t sit right with him.

“It seems like it might be more pain tolerance than long-term injury concern, and it’s the World Cup, and I would like for the guy who’s supposed to change American soccer to be able to fight through it,” Wright said. “But we got away with it in the Australia game; it was fine, and he was rearing and ready to go. This one, there is no confusion about it. We saw what happened. We saw him suffer the injury. He kicked the guy, which I would put akin to, you know, in hazards of the job, being a garbage man and having stuff splash on you. It’s unfortunate, but it probably happens more often than you’d like. And for that to be debilitating to the point to where he cannot be involved in the play for the next four or five minutes, we allow a goal, and he begs out of the biggest game of his life is unacceptable.”

This is the same Pulisic who asked out of the 2025 Gold Cup after logging more than 3,500 minutes for AC Milan that season, and the request drew a pointed rebuke from Landon Donovan during Fox’s UEFA Nations League Final coverage that June. Without naming Pulisic directly, Donovan tied the decision to a then40-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, who was still playing through a long season for Portugal.

“This is what it means to represent your country,” Donovan said. “And if you don’t want to take this as a professional soccer player, as someone who gets the opportunity to wear that jersey and take it seriously and responsibly, then don’t come in. He’s tired, he’s out there grinding, hurt himself in the process, and I can’t help but think about our guys on vacation, not wanting to play in the Gold Cup. It’s pissing me off.”

Clint Dempsey added his own criticism of the decision, while Pulisic’s father, Mark, responded by having ChatGPT explain Donovan’s own mental and physical burnout during his 2012-13 sabbatical from the national team, one that ended with Donovan left off the 2014 World Cup roster, then posted the AI’s answer to Instagram with his own message attached: “This guy is talking about commitment. Look in the mirror + grow a pair and call names out, or are you afraid?”

A year later, Wright argued that rest hadn’t produced what it was supposed to.

“Pulisic skipped the Gold Cup, much to the dismay of many current & former teammates & his coach, to be ‘best ready’ for the World Cup,” Wright wrote. “He then went 6 months without scoring before the World Cup & then in the 5 games of the World Cup, he missed one & left two early with injury.”

“To be clear, there were a TON of reasons the USMNT lost today, primarily that Belgium was way better in all facets,” Wright added in another post. “But to have the man who is supposed to be the greatest player in the history of our country simply no-show in the biggest tournament of his life is just awful.”

He wasn’t alone in that read, given that Carli Lloyd made a similar point on Fox’s own postgame coverage, saying she was “a bit disappointed” in Pulisic specifically and that the U.S. simply didn’t get enough from him “in this particular game and really the whole World Cup.”

Pulisic left the opener against Paraguay early with a leg injury, missed the Australia game entirely, returned as a late substitute against Türkiye, played most of the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was pulled midway through the second half against Belgium. In that last game, he lost the ball 16 times in 59 minutes and didn’t record a shot or create a single chance, only the sixth time in 76 career USMNT starts that’s happened to him.

“He was a no-show the entire tournament,” added Wright, “but you can’t have the best player — most talented player on your team — not play well for an extended, extended stretch.”

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann