Top Stories

Pulisic sets Champions League appearance record for American players

Christian Pulisic made his 24th career appearance in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday, breaking the all-time record for American players.

The 21-year-old played the full 90 minutes in Chelsea’s thrilling 4-4 draw with Ajax in London. Pulisic drew a penalty kick in the match, while also seeing his teammates overcome a three-goal deficit in the second-half.

Pulisic earned his second-consecutive UCL start for Frank Lampard’s team and his third-consecutive in all competitions.

With his 24th appearance, Pulisic surpassed former midfielder Jermaine Jones for the record. Jones held the record with 23 combined appearances during time at both Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen.

After a slow start to life at Stamford Bridge, Pulisic has picked it up of late for the Blues. In his last seven appearances in all competitions, Pulisic has four goals and three assists in all competitions. He also joined fellow American Clint Dempsey as the only U.S. players to score a Premier League hat trick.

During that span, Chelsea has registered a record of 5-1-1 which has seen them jump to fourth in the Premier League table and second in their Champions League group.

Pulisic will have one final match this weekend with Chelsea at home against London rivals Crystal Palace before an expected call-in to the U.S. Men’s National Team next week.

 

 

Comments

  1. Pullisic is definitely playing with confidence this will transfer into the US National team but others will have to step it up. I would rest him vs cuba to safe him for canada.

    Reply
    • Agree with resting players for Canada

      I don’t agree with automatically transferring the form from easy games where he is one small cog to game where it will be tougher and he is asked to be THE cog. Hasn’t really worked very well so far, not sure why anything has changed.

      Reply
  2. While it is great that CP22 is getting so many minutes and has become a starter, I hope that Lampard doesn’t over work him. Even a young player can break down if pushed too hard and we have seen that happen. Tyler Adams is a good example since he had no break last season, going straight from MLS to the second half of the Bundesliga leading to injury.

    Reply
    • The irony that we’ve gone from freaking out about CP’s lack of playing time to now worrying about him being overplayed by the coach, all within the span of a month. Can’t make this stuff up…

      Reply
      • Well, I can only comment from my own position and outlook. It isn’t ironic for me because I never freaked out about his not playing and, in fact, suggested that people should calm down about it, that it was much too early, especially given that he was changing not just teams, but countries and leagues.

      • Gary: I was speaking about the US fans collectively, not you specifically. But it wasn’t that long ago that many fans (not you) were saying he had made a mistake and needed to look for a loan. Now we have fans (such as you) concerned about overuse. My fear is that, if he continues to deliver goals and assists, he’s gonna become a target of hard fouls, get seriously injured, and miss a large chunk of the season. I hope I’m proven wrong.

  3. I believe if someone were to crunch the data you would find a high correlation between a NT roster’s combined UCL minutes within a recent time frame say within the past two seasons and that NTs WC success. Belgium is an example of a NT that saw a growth in its players UCL minutes over the last three WC cycles cumulating in a semifinal appear last WC.

    It seems obvious of course but having our NT players stay home in MLS doesn’t help us in this likely correlated statistic to competitive success at a WC. Congrats to Puli for surpassing JJ in games in UCL. Hoping for more passing JJ soon, Dest, McKennie, Adams hopefully in the years to come.

    Reply
    • Well, there are some who maintain that the UCL is better competition than the World Cup and they may have a point. It’s encouraging that Dest has had some games, and we have several Bundesliga players who are likely to appear in the future. I remember a past USMNT coach who emphasized the importance of UCL p;lay for US players. As you say, there’s nothing like it in MLS or CONCACAF.

      Reply
    • Although I agree that our players need to start heading over to europe when they’re 15/16 and join an academy (something we have been saying for years), and it seems to be an upward trend,

      but i think that what’s just as important is sending coaches overseas as well, get them coaching in academies like ajax, dortmund, or even teams in the premier league and have them bring that quality back to the states.

      thirdly, US players need to get minutes in our league alone, how many starters in each MLS club are american? How many of them are the best player in their MLS team? The key is to get young players going to European academies AND also getting quality US players starting and making an impact in our own league. The likes of Bradley, Jozy, Ngyuen, Lletget starting isn’t enough, we also need more young Americans like Pomykal to start becoming key contributors to their respective MLS teams.

      The fact that there hasn’t been an American consistently in the Golden Boot race in MLS for a long time is alarming as well, and no i’m not talking about Wondow, other younger players need to step up. Can’t have all these foreign players lighting up the scoresheet every season.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to TheFrenchOne Cancel reply