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Mauricio Pochettino, the head coach of the USA men’s football team, dropped forward Christian Pulisic from the squad for their two friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland, played earlier this week, due to disagreement with him about his availability for the national side. The 26-year-old, who plays for AC Milan in club football, gave the option to Mauricio Pochettino to select him for the friendlies before resting him for the Gold Cup, but the head coach decided against it.
Notably, in his international career, Christian Pulisic has played 78 matches for the United States, scoring 32 goals in the national team colours since debuting in 2016, while his workload over the last couple of seasons has been quite high. He has competed in 118 matches for club and country since becoming a part of AC Milan in the summer of 2023, which is probably the reason why he asked for rest from the Gold Cup.
Players need to listen and to stick with our plan: Pochettino on Pulisic's exclusion from US squad
While former US teammates Alexi Lalas and Landon Donovan were critical about the decision from Christian Pulisic, his national team manager didn’t like the idea about it either. In his interview with CBS Sports earlier in the week, the forward spoke about respecting the decision from Mauricio Pochettino of dropping him from the US squad, he did not understand the premise of it.
At the same time, he called out the people questioning his commitment to the national team, calling them “way out of line”. Amid all this, Mauricio Pochettino gave his side of the story on Saturday, June 14, as per BBC Sport, “Players [do] not need to understand or not understand. Players need to listen and to stick with our plan. They cannot dictate the plan. The most important thing is that we explained why we decided not to include [Christian Pulisic] in the two friendly games.”
Moreover, the United States team went on to lose to Turkey 2-1, followed by a 4-0 defeat against Switzerland, which means that they will play the Gold Cup opener against Trinidad and Tobago with four straight losses to their name.
