From vivid flashes of promise in the Ruhr to hype and stagnation in West London — Christian Pulisic’s vacillating European tour will aim for revival in Lombardy, northern Italy.
Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, now AC Milan. The 24-year-old’s CV remains superficially impressive, albeit with growing question marks over whether he can recapture the magic which persuaded the Premier League club to pay £58million ($74.8m) for him back in 2019.
He had already struggled for form and minutes in his final season at Dortmund, having previously shone, and — on the whole — that pattern continued in the Premier League.
As the USMNT player jetted into Italy to undertake a medical on Wednesday, the forward’s immediate objective could not have been clearer: he has to make a success of this move to Milan.
Pulisic is tasked with creating a consistent body of work to rebuff the doubts which surfaced in England, when patchy performances and niggling injuries saw last season yield his fewest league minutes since his debut campaign in Bundesliga.
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With next year’s Copa America looming and the 2026 World Cup on home turf, it will be a lift for club and country if the attacker can take things to the next level on a domestic setting, establish a rhythm and go into those tournaments as a matured, reliable performer.
For Milan, who won Serie A for the 19th time in 2022 but finished only fourth last time round, his acquisition is part of an attempt to get back on track, too. Theirs is a shared aim, then. But what other factors fuelled their desire to bring Pulisic to San Siro?
For starters, he is linking up with a manager, Stefano Pioli, who really wants him; something he has arguably lacked since being persuaded by Pioli’s compatriot, Maurizio Sarri, to join Chelsea over four years ago.
Pioli instructs Pulisic’s former Chelsea team-mate, Fikayo Tomori (Photo: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
The feeling in Milan — seven-time winners of the Champions League and semi-finalists last season — is that, at his best, they are signing a very good player; a well-rounded winger, more technical than athletic, but also a creator and goalscorer who can dribble with the ball in tight spaces.
Pioli knows his side needs to be less reliant on Portugal international Rafael Leao for breaking down opponents who defend deep against them. The Rossoneri had an average of 60 per cent possession against teams in the bottom half of Serie A last season, and the hope is Pulisic can help make that dominance of the ball more effective.
Their expected goals (xG) created versus bottom-half teams (1.34) lagged behind eight of their domestic rivals: Inter (1.66 xG), Atalanta (1.62), Napoli (1.56), Roma (1.46), Juventus (1.45), Torino (1.42), Lazio (1.38) and Fiorentina (1.36).
Milan also believe they are signing a multi-functional player; one who has played a lot of minutes on the right wing, particularly at Borussia Dortmund, and is comfortable on the left as well. The Italian club’s manager, though, sees Pulisic as a natural No 10, which the player himself has found encouraging.
So, while Milan view him as an upgrade to Junior Messias and Alexis Saelemaekers on the right, they know he can shine across the final third.
Then there is the EU passport — Pulisic moved to Germany before the age of 16 and qualified through his Croatian grandfather, Mate — which made his move to Italy smoother, and the fact he made it clear he favoured Milan strongly over the only other concrete offer on the table, from the French club Lyon.
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Milan know his injury record is not ideal and that becoming one of their high earners means there is an element of risk to this transfer, although they will pay him far less than his salary at Stamford Bridge.
They will also pay less tax on their new attacker’s wages, thanks to a government relief scheme that allows Italian clubs to pay less duty for players arriving from abroad. That will potentially boost Serie A by attracting bigger, box-office stars. The first season of Pulisic’s career in Italy will now be broadcast back home in the United States on the streaming service Paramount+, with CBS Sports having acquired the league’s broadcast rights from ESPN in 2021 in a reported three-year deal worth $75 million per season.
Securing their man has been relatively straightforward.
They had initially tried their luck with a lower bid to test Chelsea’s resolve over their valuation of Pulisic. Although the English club and Milan have forged a good relationship in the past few years — Olivier Giroud, Fikayo Tomori, Tiemoue Bakayoko (on loan) and, most recently, Ruben Loftus-Cheek have all joined the Italian club — they sensed the leverage was weighted more in their favour in negotiations over Pulisic.
They initially tabled a €14million (£12m; $15.3m) offer for the USMNT forward, raising it slightly when that was dismissed, and then only pushed to what would be their accepted offer, for an initial €20million plus €2million in add-ons with a meaningful sell-on clause in the event of a future transfer, after Lyon shook the dynamic with a bid worth €25million (£21.5m, $27.3m) plus their own sell-on clause.
Pulisic never had any interest in moving to Ligue 1, so Chelsea were unable to force the auction Lyon had generated too hard; especially when they had already effectively devalued the player by offering him as a makeweight in their failed bid for Leao last summer. Their reluctance to offer Pulisic much game time since then, while supplementing their squad with the likes of Raheem Sterling and Christopher Nkunku, who operate in the American’s position, meant his value was undermined even further.
Pulisic played his part in Chelsea’s European Cup success of 2021 (Photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)
In that context, the London club might feel they did well to reach an agreement in a package worth up to €22million ($24.2m, £18.8m) overall.
The numbers will not matter much to Pulisic as he plans for life in another new country. This is another chance to flourish. His focus will be proving he can be a major player in a European league, especially in light of former USMNT hero Landon Donovan claiming he should have returned home to Major League Soccer rather than Italy.
MLS’s rise continues in his absence, but Pulisic seems determined to show his brave teenage decision to move to Germany will culminate in everything he had dreamed of back then — playing a significant role in a successful, powerhouse of a team; playing a significant role in a team that wins trophies.
Achieve that and he will feel fully comfortable in his skin when cast as the USMNT’s leading star.
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(Top photos: TF-Images/Getty Images; John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)
