Christian Pulisic is flirting with World Class status

An American is making the difference for AC Milan at the top of Serie A.

It’s still gobsmacking to see an American make the difference in heavyweight bouts at the top of Serie A. When I interviewed Christian Pulisic for GQ last season, I set the scene for the story by looking at his telling intervention in the Derby della Madonnina a couple months prior. But he just about one-upped himself against Napoli on Sunday, assisting one and scoring another to sink the champions and throw A.C. Milan’s hat in the ring for the Scudetto.

It was Gareth-Bale-in-the-Copa-del-Rey-final stuff on the first one, as Pulisic went steaming down the touchline, rescuing the ball from going out of play while running at full tilt. The #11 in red and black took a healthy touch which seemed to put it in the defender’s path, but like Bale all those years ago against FC Barcelona, Pulisic had the pace to make up for it and power on by. He showed vision and patience once he arrived in the box, declining a cutback to Santiago Giménez at the penalty spot to pick out Alexis Saelemaekers for a back-post tap-in.

He nearly stacked another assist with a beautifully weighted through ball in behind after he took up a smart position near the center circle to engineer a counterattack 27 minutes in. But his next killer act came just a few minutes later, when he spotted an artery in the Napoli defense and sliced through it with a perfectly timed run, just in time for Youssouf Fofana to accept a low cross into the area and lay it off for him first time. Pulisic marched onto it and struck, 2-0, wheeling off into the corner with his arms outstretched as the San Siro erupted.

Like I said, there’s something about watching an American do it on this kind of stage. We’ve just never seen it before. The Curva Sud was bouncing even before this match kicked off, Milan’s famous cathedral alive with the belief that this titanic club was ready to compete for Italy’s top prize once again, and a kid from Pennsylvania is at the center of their plan to do that. He is the top scorer in Serie A. For all the hand-wringing about the state of the national team, the United States finally has a player who’s threatening to become world class.

———————————

Test your pundit: Did they emerge from the 2-1 thriller at St. James’ Park spouting the narrative that Arsenal are all about set pieces? Nobody with respect for their own audience who watched that game can pretend the visitors’ threat was contained to the two late headed strikes with which they commandeered the three points, though Mikel Merino did once again prove that he is one of the purest midfield goal scorers in world football.

Gabriel, meanwhile, found true redemption after his weak showing on Newcastle’s own headed opener, rising up to power in the winner after 96 minutes and make the case that the Gunners have a bit of that champion strength in the telling moments. They’ll hope to score more goals this season and leave fewer matches teetering on the fine margins, but there will be times they need to go to hostile territory and snatch victory from the jaws of a draw. The 14 of those they posted last season doomed their title charge.

Part of that is more trickery and invention from their creative souls. Eberechi Eze was a massive addition this summer, but it was the captain of the old guard, Martin Ødegaard, who came on late in the match and started slicing Newcastle’s entrenched defense to pieces. If the Norwegian can regain his vision for the killer ball and the conviction to play it, perhaps Arsenal can get back to the kind of flowing open-play patterns that carved open many a team back in 2022/23 and during their blistering second half of 2023/24.

Also, how good is Jurrien Timber?

———————————

Liverpool have been living on the edge all season, sitting on the fence and always falling over onto the right side. At Selhurst Park on Saturday, though, they tumbled into the neighbor’s yard and got bit by the dog.

It’s that perennial question that Stephen Warnock and I tried to answer on the podcast a couple of weeks back: If you’re constantly scoring late winners, is that the mark of champions or an unsustainable approach that could ultimately see you punished? Just how many goals can Liverpool score at 83 minutes or later over the next eight months?

Maybe it just comes down to the fact that Crystal Palace are a very good side. Readers of our Friday match map will know I saw this as a major challenge for the defending champions, and Palace duly obliged. They’ve lost some of their most brilliant creative forces over the last couple of transfer windows and just keep marching forward, not unlike their bitter enemies Brighton. Manager Oli Glasner is the real deal — to the point they might be at risk of losing him, too, if a big club comes calling next summer.

———————————

From two title contestants, we move to a team of a different description.

At Chelsea Football Club, they’ve been dining out on their new “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD” title, but I’ve been steadfast that they have yet to demonstrate they’re a top team. They had a miserable second half to last season, and there was little reason to believe they were suddenly ready to compete for the Premier League and Champions League when they’ve still got problems at goalkeeper, center back, and center forward.¹

There was a measure of satisfaction for the neutral in watching them get dismantled at home by a club they now seem to see as their own personal academy. Brighton had a look at the Blues and the many ex-Seagulls in their ranks and thought, “Have some of this.” There was an undercurrent to this one, a nasty edge to the fight, but three late punches from the visitors put Chelsea on the mat.

After six games, each of these teams has eight points, but the Chels haven’t even faced a top opponent domestically. They were battered by Bayern Munich in Europe, and next week, Liverpool will really test them.

———————————

It was just a few months ago, with the Championship playoff final looming, that longtime Sunderland commentator Nick Barnes wondered on The Football Weekend podcast whether it would ultimately benefit the club to win promotion to the Premier League. He said it was an active debate among the Mackems, and there was something to it: “Sunderland have a perilous connection to the Premier League,” as Barnes put it, as the swirling mega-money has at times sent them spinning out of the division and down the English league pyramid.

But for now, they look perfectly at home at the top: With their victory over Nottingham Forest this weekend, they now sit fifth. It was an advertisement for their steady approach under manager Regis Le Bris, while their opponents were an ad for something else.

The chaos and dysfunction at Forest has sent Nuno Espirito Santo packing and brought Ange Postecoglou in to replace him, but the Aussie has yet to win a match. They’re one point above the drop zone and two clear of West Ham, who’ve also sacked their manager, Graham Potter, to bring in…Nuno.

With the manager merry-go-round in full effect among the most at-risk stalwarts of the top division, the newly promoted teams are thriving and may — for the first time in years — keep their place in the Premier League.

1. João Pedro is a good player, but only the summer hype machine could turn him into a league-winning center forward.