Chelsea: Please keep the Christian Pulisic comments in context

Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic has had little better to do lately than interviews and TikToks, but the former has been taken out of context in US media.

There is nothing more powerful in football than a strong narrative. They can make a manager whose teams really only have YouTube highlight reels and a near empty trophy cabinet look like the messiah of the sport. Narratives can make a manager down on his luck (yet who still wins a trophy) look like the cause of all the problems as he “gives up”.

And narrative can easily twist Christian Pulisic’s latest words just as it did his entire introduction to Chelsea. The United States media has been especially guilty of this, for obvious reasons, but that does not make the twist any better.

Most articles are running with the line “nobody at Chelsea noticed me when I joined“. Boom! Got them! That line reinforces the narrative that ole Fat Frank Lampard had his bias towards the English and ignored the American wunderkind. And, like the rest of the world, Lampard saw that Pulisic really was the American Lionel Messi as soon as he started playing him like he always should have!

Except that not only ignores the context of the very comment itself but the entire first few months of Pulisic’s career at Chelsea. The comment itself makes mention that nobody noticed Pulisic when he arrived because they were half asleep. Pulisic is great, but nobody needs a welcome party in the middle of a jet lagged night.

Pulisic himself understood that he had to earn his spot but he also was aware of the context of that. The media ignored all that at the start of the season. They only saw that he was not playing and surely, surely, a bias was involved.

Little mention was made of Pulisic’s injuries the previous season. Or the Gold Cup taking up literally the entire summer. Even being kind, Pulisic had played nonstop from January to his arrival at Chelsea and that is discounting the time he was out injured for the rest of that season for Dortmund. The kid very much needed a break and Lampard gave it to him while also seeing what he had to offer and how badly he wanted to play.

Pulisic did not so much as change Lampard’s mind as he simply got the break he needed before Lampard made any decision on him. The cries from the US were understandable but they were unfounded.

But twisting quotes like “no one noticed me” (because they were nearly asleep) into some oh poor is me context is ridiculous. Pulisic is the American golden child and one would be hard pressed to find an American fan that does not want him to play. But he does not need to be coddled. He earned his spot over time after he was fit enough to return. There is no need for the retreading on a path that was never real to begin with.

Pulisic will be a better player on his own merit than whatever narrative is cooked up about him. This one? It is just as lazy as the initial cries about his lack of playing time. And time will prove that correct as well.