Christian Pulisic has been capped 20 times by the United States of America, but it is over in Europe in which the 20-year-old sensation is really making a name for himself.
The attacker made the move to German giants Borussia Dortmund at the tender age of 15, leaving behind his hometown of Hershey, Pennsylvania in pursuit of his footballing dream – a dream that is fast becoming a reality.
And amid speculation linking him with a move to the Premier League, specifically Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea, DW Kick off! went back to the place Pulisic left behind at the start of his rise towards the upper echelons of the game.
Pulisic’s footballing adventure began at the age of six when introduced by his father to Pennsylvania Classics, with his first coach Steve Klein remarking that he ‘always knew early on that he was a special player’.
And after a year in England with Brackley Town, what with his mother moving to the UK as part of a teaching exchange, it wasn’t long before Pulisic made that career-changing and indeed career-defining move to Germany.
The attacker joined German heavyweights Dortmund at just 15 years of age, joining one of the best teams in Europe given that just a few years earlier they won the Bundesliga under now-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, and indeed reached the final of the Champions League back in 2013.
And after succeeding greatly with the club’s youth teams, it didn’t take long for Pulisic to earn his debut for the senior side under Thomas Tuchel, coming on as a second-half substitute in their 2-0 win over Ingolstadt in the Bundesliga, before netting his first goal for the club just four months later in victory over Hamburg.
That has since paved the way for 14 further goals and 24 assists in 115 appearances for Dortmund, five goals and seven assists of which coming last term in their run to fourth place in the Bundesliga, while he has bagged three times and laid on four assists this time round to help Lucien Favre’s side to top spot in the German top-flight.
Unsurprisingly, his meteoric rise has attracted interest from some of the biggest clubs in England, with Chelsea reportedly keen, thus further underlining just how huge a star Pulisic is, and indeed how far he could go in the game.
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