How exciting will the Gold Cup be without Christian Pulisic?

Yahoo

23-05-2025

How exciting will the Gold Cup be without Christian Pulisic? | The Cooligans
Yahoo Sports contributors Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros react to the United States Men's National Team's 27-player roster and debate whether or not it makes sense for Christian Pulisic to be absent. Hear the full conversation on the 'The Cooligans' podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Us men's national team have released their 2027-man roster for the Gold Cup.
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A lot of names missing.
Christian Palii, not in it, not in it.
Yeah, my man's taking a sabbatical.
He got, he's in a hammock, bro.
He's got his sunglasses on, flip flops, taking a break.
I think apparently if, if he plays 49 more minutes this season, um, it will be the either the most amount of minutes.
Played in his career or something like that.
They're they're basically saying like, he's a lot of miles on them, got a lot of minutes logged and uh let's just we just kind of give him a break.
It does kind of take away from this excitement of the Gold Cup because we're realistically not going to be seeing the best uh USMNT roster of available players.
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The Club World Cup also takes away some of the players, but also being the last real.
Competition before the World Cup, you'd want your a squad to get more minutes together and that the fact that that's not happening is a little bit upsetting, especially Christian Ballistic, just you're a leader, you're a captain, you know what I mean?
So I kind of want you there.
I get it.
I get both perspectives.
It's hard to be that, uh, harsh or critical about it because you also want him to be healthy at the healthy, and he's having the best run of form in his club career.
You want that to continue.
Maybe they're getting moved to a team that's in Champions League or at least be even more of a, of a leader at AC Milan.
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So I get it, but it's the leading scorer at AC Milan, bro, can he be the leading scorer during the Gold Cup though?
Yeah.
The biggest issue about the 2026 World Cup is that we don't have very, we don't have meaningful games to play in to qualify for that World Cup because we automatically qualify.
So now it's like getting.
That energy and excitement, you know, chemistry, camaraderie, we need to build all of that.
And also, to your point, you gotta find the, the fringe players that can either sneak into a more meaningful position or those players that can sneak into the fringe, you know what I mean, that can get themselves in that squad that can add depth, right?
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So, uh, so look, I'm, I'm hoping it all works out for, for Plus, and we don't know if he ends up, uh, moving to a different club because that's also a real possibility, uh, but that's, uh, that's an option this summer, so he, I'm sure he has a lot going on.