In just a few days, the FIFA World Cup will arrive in North America for the first time in more than three decades, with 104 matches spread across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. While this might sound overly optimistic to many soccer fans, I have always suspected that it was only a matter of time before the “beautiful game” truly captured this country the way it has everywhere else. As Americans, after all, we tend to come around eventually (anybody on WhatsApp?) With 78 matches on American soil, games in 11 cities including quarterfinals in Miami and the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, this summer might finally be that moment.
The person most responsible for making it happen is Christian Pulisic, a 27-year-old forward who calls Palm Beach County home when he’s in the U.S. and has spent a decade competing at the highest level of European football. Originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania, he is the captain of Team USA, the face of the tournament on home soil, and, depending on how the next few weeks go, the closest thing American soccer has to a household name. Here are five things worth knowing about him before the first ball is kicked on June 11.
1. He is arguably the greatest American soccer player of all time
At just 27, Pulisic is already in the conversation alongside legends like Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey as one of the best to ever wear the American jersey. Nicknamed “Captain America,” he is a four-time U.S. Soccer Player of the Year, the youngest captain in the modern era of the national team, and the only American man to play in, and win, a Champions League final. He scored the goal that sent the US through at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar against Iran, suffering a pelvic contusion in the process and watching the second half from a hospital bed. “That’s what stamps your legacy,” he told Time magazine earlier this year.
2. When he’s back in the U.S., his home base is in Palm Beach County
Though he spends most of the year playing for AC Milan in Italy, Pulisic’s American home base is Jupiter, Florida, where he has joined the growing roster of elite athletes and celebrities who have made Palm Beach County their refuge. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Celine Dion also live there. His home, purchased in 2020, sits inside a gated community on the north fork of the Loxahatchee River, with a boat dock, a pool, and a putting green.
3. He comes from a true soccer family
Both of his parents played collegiate soccer at George Mason University, where they also met. His father Mark went on to play eight seasons of professional indoor soccer before becoming a coach. From the start, the signs were there. By age 5, he could explain soccer’s famously convoluted offside rule and would sit through entire Champions League matches with his father in their basement. Not exactly typical behavior for a kindergartener.
4. He spent a formative year in England as a child
When Pulisic was 7, his mother Kelley won a Fulbright teaching award and the family spent a year in Tackley, a quiet village near Oxford, where he played for the youth team of local club Brackley Town. It was there, competing daily against older boys, that something clicked. His father later said it was that year in England that propelled Christian into truly falling in love with the game and becoming obsessed with it. By his early teens, he was already on U.S. Soccer’s radar.
5. He succeeded where few Americans have: at Europe’s top clubs
Pulisic left Hershey at 15 for Borussia Dortmund in Germany, where he became the youngest non-German player to score in a Bundesliga game. From there, he joined Chelsea in a then-record transfer for a North American player. He now plays for AC Milan. His path through European football is without precedent for an American, and it was not easy. When he arrived in Dortmund, his teammates refused to pass him the ball. He got through it by being, in his own words, “delusional with confidence.”
This summer, he brings all of that to a World Cup on home soil. The opener against Paraguay on June 12 in Los Angeles will be his biggest stage yet. After a decade of proving himself in someone else’s country, Pulisic finally gets to do it in his own, and we can’t wait to see it happen!
