American sports use “trades” in a way that “soccer” doesn’t really – but Captain America himself may be ready to change that.
Christian Pulisic is surplus to requirements at Chelsea – if you weren’t confident saying that a year ago you certainly can now. He’s had another year sitting on the bench, and the club have only added more quality and depth ahead of him.
He’s got two main suitors it seems, and both have players that Chelsea want. That means a part-exchange trade could yet be on the cards – whether it comes out that way on paper or whether it’s more of a side agreement, quid pro quo. Football Italia are convinced that the Serie A interest is very real.
Juventus have striker Dusan Vlahovic and AC Milan have goalkeeper Mike Maignan. Both seem unrealistic targets just because of their price tag – but if Chelsea chuck in Pulisic on their end, perhaps something can be engineered after all? We’re not holding our breath, but it certainly is another lever we can potentially pull.
Huh???
I read the headline and thought, “oh, here comes the belated mention of Pulisic’s starring role in the USMNT’s 3-0 demolition of Mexico.” Silly me!
Here I am thinking that the way players are valued is based off their on-field performances, and, therefore, the news is that Pulisic’s “weight” in any summer deals was just strengthened by a strong performance while on international duty. But it appears I’m mistaken [scratches his head]. OR maybe SuperFrank “buried the lede” so deep that it didn’t even appear in his piece, lol! I mean, if you’re going to write about Pulisic’s value as a makeweight, then how can you NOT talk about his two-goal performance less than 24-hours earlier against his country’s bitterest rival in a semifinal match? It’s the one thing that makes the whole topic of the article timely/newsworthy for goodness sake?!
In order to write this piece (which doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know) it seems to me that either (1) you’re ignorant of what Pulisic did because you have provincial, Euro-centric attitude toward football and, therefore, ignore anything that happens on a North American pitch, or (2) you know full well what Pulisic did but hold such contempt for the American (and have spent so much time deriding him) that you can’t bring yourself to credit his performance (despite “Chelsea News” lauding Mudryk for a far less meaningful performance). Either way, it’s a bad look and it’s poor journalism.
Pulisic is a very good player with his off the balls runs, his direct play, with his willingness to include other players (both creating space for them as well as giving the ball up if they’re better positioned). Much of his game, however, is all about his confidence, which is why he performs so well for his national team and less so for Chelsea where he gets no support. Obviously, Chelsea has no idea what they’re doing spending money on players then in short time taking big losses in getting rid of them (Werner, Lukako, as well as others who will follow this period). At this point in time, the only reason a quality player would come to Chelsea is for their overpayment to play. Next year, again with a number of good pieces that don’t play for others, they will finish closer to relegation than the top 4.