Christian Pulisic is still half a decade too young to serve in the US Senate, but such age restrictions do not apply to the Italian sports lexicon. As Milan prepared to face Newcastle in a Champions League group match last month, Gazzetta dello Sport named him along with Olivier Giroud as the two players teammates would look to for leadership. “Milan must rely on experience,” wrote journalist Marco Passotto, “it must trust its senators.”
Pulisic, 25 years old, is twelve years younger than Giroud. Yet he had already played 53 games in the Champions League – just 13 fewer than the Frenchman and 18 more than any Newcastle player.
It’s one of the reasons why Milan wanted Pulisic in the first place. When the club returned to the Champions League in 2021 after a seven-year absence, it did so with a team of European newcomers. More than half of the starting XI for Milan’s tournament opener against Liverpool had never played a Champions League match at the time. No one could top Simon Kjær’s seven appearances in the competition.
For Milan supporters, that evening at Anfield felt like turning back the clock. Their team led 2-1 at half-time and images of one of the fans crying in the stands went viral.
For generations, Milan had defined themselves by international success: their seven Champions League/European Cup wins were second only to Real Madrid, and their five UEFA Super Cups were still the most joint of any team. Juventus is Italy’s most successful club domestically, but the Rossoneri were continental conquerors.
Not anymore. That 2-1 lead turned into a 3-2 defeat and Milan finished bottom of their group. A young team lacked the know-how to navigate this new phase. Even when they advanced to the semi-finals a season later, it was no coincidence that Giroud scored or created almost half of their goals.
He was back in focus as Milan recovered from 1-0 down to beat Newcastle this month. When Rafael Leão pulled the ball back in a crowded penalty area and Fikayo Tomori cleared a shot attempt with the outside of his boot, it looked like the start of a panicked battle for goal. But the ball broke to Giroud, who played a calm first pass for Pulisic to convert.
Milan’s two ‘senators’ had delivered when the team needed them. Samuel Chukwueze came off the bench to score the winner in the 84th minute, but it was Pulisic’s goal that turned the tide of a match in which the Italians were previously in danger of being overwhelmed.
This was a crucial moment in Milan’s season. The manager, Stefano Pioli, had described the match against Newcastle as a “crossroads”. In the end, a win was only enough to put them in the Europa League. Paris Saint-Germain’s draw against Borussia Dortmund denied them progression to the knockout rounds of the Champions League. But that was much better than disappearing from Europe altogether.
Before kick-off there were suggestions that Pioli’s job was in jeopardy. Frustration was mounting over the club’s erratic form, with five defeats and only three wins in the previous ten games.
There were extenuating circumstances. Milan are facing a major injury crisis, with five of their top six centre-backs currently out of action and Leão only returning against Newcastle after a month’s loss with a hamstring problem. Yet tensions have increased as neighbors Inter have seen them retreat at the top of the rankings. Each Milan team has won Serie A 19 times, meaning the next team to do so will be the first to add a second gold star to the club crest.
Throughout this difficult stretch, Pulisic’s performances have been of rare clarity. He had started the season playing on the right wing, but switched to the left when Leão was out. He has performed consistently on both sides.
Pulisic is second on the team with six goals and tied for second with four assists. Delve into the performance data and you’ll find a similar pattern – not quite at the top of any category, but close in many of them. Pulisic has registered the second most shots on target, the third most successful dribbles and the fourth most key passes among Milan players. According to Serie A player registration, he has covered more ground while sprinting (a separate category compared to total distance covered) than any teammate apart from Tijjani Reijnders and his compatriot Yunus Musah.
More interesting than the numbers are the conversations. Pioli recently held a tactics seminar for a select audience of journalists at the Milan training ground. According to veteran reporter and commentator Paolo Condò, the manager talked about shaping his team to encourage opposing goalkeepers to play the ball to the flank that Pulisic occupies, knowing that he will be more diligent than Leão.
Pulisic’s work rate is admirable, but it is his goals that will make him memorable in Milan, and the best so far was the one he scored against Frosinone this month. Milan had a one-goal lead but struggled against opponents who have bled a few noses since their return to Serie A. Morale was low after a midweek defeat to Dortmund left Pioli’s side bottom of the Champions League group.
When goalkeeper Mike Maignan sent a long ball over the Frosinone defense, Pulisic had everything to do. Even after taming the ball with one touch, he still had two defenders on his heels and didn’t have the pace to run away from them. The composure Pulisic showed to hold off the first pair and protect the ball from a late arriving third was impressive. His no-look chip to put the ball in the net, knowing some lift was needed to get it past the three opponents now standing between him and the goal, was spectacular.
Renowned Italian sporting director Walter Sabatini, who has worked at Roma, Lazio and Inter and recently took up a position at Salernitana, was fascinated. “That act alone is worth three 4-0 wins,” he said. “It was surreal, beautiful, I would call it deceptive [how he tricked the defenders].”
In a summer in which Milan overhauled its squad and signed not only Pulisic but also Reijnders, Musah, Samuel Chukwueze, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Noah Okafor and Marco Pellegrino, for a combined cost of more than $110 million, it is not an exaggeration to say that the first of these was the most impressive. Without Pulisic’s goals and assists, Leão’s absence would have been a lot more painful.
Despite all the criticism directed at Pioli by part of the fanbase, Milan are still third in Serie A – nine points behind Inter, but also five points ahead of fifth place. The manager has repeatedly stressed that finishing in the top four is the main goal, but that he would like to do “a little more”. A deep run in the Europa League could provide the path to making this season feel like a bigger success.
For Pulisic individually, there are even more goals to pursue. “I want to be more open,” he told Gazzetta in an interview early this season, “more extroverted, maybe speak in Italian. Italy will help me.”
So far, his limited interactions with the press have all been in English, but these are just the early years. Between taking care of injured teammates and taking on a leadership role with a new team in a new country, Milan’s 25-year-old senator has had plenty on his plate.