Christian Pulisic injury news: USMNT teammates say star will ‘be ready’ for Australia
IRVINE, Calif. — Christian Pulisic trained separately from United States teammates on Monday, but multiple players said they were confident that Pulisic would be ready for Friday’s World Cup match against Australia.
Pulisic, the U.S. men’s national team’s best player, left the team’s World Cup opener vs. Paraguay on Friday at halftime after taking a kick to the back of his leg.
He was present at Monday’s training session, and was with the team’s other 25 players in the makeshift gym before on-field work began. When players trotted out onto the field, Pulisic remained in the gym for around five minutes, then went to an adjacent field to work individually with two members of the team’s performance staff.
He was seen doing lateral hops from one leg to the other, and single-leg jumps. A team spokesman said that Pulisic would do a “modified training session.”
But two players indicated that the injury wasn’t a concern.
“Christian will be ready,” midfielder Tyler Adams said before Monday’s session. “Everyone, let’s relax.”
Forward Haji Wright, who’s known Pulisic since they were teenagers, said: “He’s good. He’s been normal. He said it wasn’t a big deal.”
Pulisic entered the tournament with a clean bill of health and immense hype, but two days before last Friday’s opener against Paraguay, “he received a kick” in his leg during a training session, U.S. head coach Mauricio Pochettino said Friday.
Pulisic said he then “got a bit of a kick” during the first half in the same left calf area. Pochettino said that during halftime, Pulisic started to get tight and could not walk. As a precaution, he was substituted.
“I hope it’s not a big issue,” Pochettino said Friday after the match. He added that he hoped Pulisic would be available for his team’s second Group D game.
Pulisic himself said on Friday after the match: “I’m really hoping that it’s nothing. Taking a little bit of precaution today, but I’m hoping I’ll be fine the next few days.”
When asked to expand on the nature of the injury, the 27-year-old winger said: “Just the back of my leg, my calf area. But I’ve had similar things before and I’m staying positive. I don’t think it’s anything at all.”
Adams seemed to confirm Monday that any fears were unfounded. “When you go in at halftime, things obviously get tight within the 15 minute break,” Adams said, “but it’ll be fine.”
The U.S. was already up 3-0 at the time of the substitution. And Pulisic was excellent while on the field. He helped create the first U.S. goal (a Paraguay own goal) by splitting two defenders. He assisted the second with a left-footed cross to Folarin Balogun.
“He was extremely sharp and ready to go,” Adams said. “And when you get that version of Christian, it makes everyone else around you just believe even more, because he’s such an important player.
“The amount of times he got the ball, and there’s three players around him, and he creates something for someone else — that’s the importance of what he does,” Adams later continued. “So it doesn’t matter if he’s scoring goals. He creates spaces for Weston [McKennie], he creates spaces for Flo [Balogun], and that makes us a more dangerous team. … That’s the value of Christian.”
The U.S., after a day off on Sunday, will train three times at Great Park in Irvine this week before traveling to Seattle on Wednesday. It will train at the University of Washington’s football stadium Thursday before Friday’s match against Australia, which kicks off at noon local time, 3 p.m. ET.
The match could be pivotal, with the U.S. and Australia tied atop the group, and with head-to-head as the first tiebreaker if the teams both end up on four, six or seven points.
And Pulisic could be pivotal for the U.S. But, at the same time, preserving his health throughout the tournament will be paramount, and playing against the Aussies could present some risk.
Pochettino will surely remember how Australia treated Pulisic when these two teams met in a friendly last October. Jason Geria, an Australian defender, fouled Pulisic hard at least twice in the opening 30 minutes. One of the rough tackles led to a hamstring injury that forced Pulisic out of the game and kept him sidelined for multiple weeks.
All 25 other U.S. players trained with the full group on Monday, four days before the match.