Christian Pulisic has been a bright spot in a frustrating Milan season

Christian Pulisic is still half a decade too young to serve in the US Senate, but no such age restrictions apply to the Italian sporting lexicon. As Milan prepared to face Newcastle in a do-or-die Champions League group game last month, the Gazzetta dello Sport named him together with Olivier Giroud as the two players who teammates would look to for leadership. “Milan must trust in experience,” wrote journalist Marco Passotto, “it must trust its senators.”

Aged 25, Pulisic is 12 years Giroud’s junior. Yet he had already made 53 Champions League appearances – only 13 fewer than the Frenchman, and 18 more than any Newcastle player.

It is one of the reasons why Milan wanted Pulisic to begin with. When the club returned to the Champions League after a seven-year absence in 2021, it did so with a team of European novices. More than half of the starting XI for Milan’s tournament opener against Liverpool back then had never played a Champions League game. Nobody could better Simon Kjær’s seven appearances in the competition.

For Milan’s supporters, that night at Anfield felt like turning back the clock. Their team led 2-1 at half-time, and footage of one of one fan weeping in the stands went viral.

For generations, Milan had defined themselves by international successes – their seven Champions League/European Cup wins ranking second only to Real Madrid, and their five Uefa Super Cups still the joint-most of any team. Juventus are Italy’s most successful club domestically, but the Rossoneri were continental conquerors.

Not any more. That 2-1 lead became a 3-2 defeat and Milan finished bottom of their group. A young squad lacked the knowhow to navigate this new stage. Even as they pushed through to the semi-final one season later, it was no accident that Giroud scored or set up almost half of their goals.

He was at the heart of things again as Milan recovered from 1-0 down to beat Newcastle this month. When Rafael Leão pulled the ball back into a crowded penalty area and Fikayo Tomori shanked an attempted shot with the outside of his boot, it looked like the start of a panicked goalmouth scramble. But the ball broke to Giroud, who laid a calm first-time pass off for Pulisic to convert instead.

Milan’s two “senators” had delivered when the team needed them to. Samuel Chukwueze came off the bench to score an 84th-minute winner, but it was Pulisic’s goal that turned the tide of a game in which the Italians had previously looked at risk of being overwhelmed.

This was a pivotal moment in Milan’s season. The manager, Stefano Pioli had described the Newcastle game as a “crossroads”. A win was ultimately only enough to put them into the Europa League – Paris Saint-Germain’s draw with Borussia Dortmund denying them progress to Champions League’s knockout rounds. But that was a lot better than crashing out of Europe altogether.

Before kick-off, there had been suggestions that Pioli’s job was at risk. Frustration was building over the club’s erratic form, with five defeats and only three wins in the preceding 10 games.

There were mitigating circumstances. Milan have been battling a major injury crisis, with five of their best six centre-backs currently out of action and Leão only returning against Newcastle after a month lost to a hamstring problem. Yet tensions have been raised by seeing neighbours Inter pull away at the top of the table. Each Milan team has won Serie A 19 times, meaning the next to do so will be the first to affix a second gold star to its club crest.

Throughout this difficult stretch, Pulisic’s performances were a rare bright note. He had begun the season playing on the right wing but swapped to the left while Leão was out. On either side, he has delivered consistently.

Pulisic is second on the team with six goals across and joint-second with four assists. Dig into the performance data and you find a similar pattern – not quite top of any category but close to it in lots of them. Pulisic has registered the second-most shots on target, the third-most successful dribbles and the fourth-most key passes among Milan players. According to Serie A’s player tracking, he has covered more ground while sprinting (a distinct category from total distance covered) than any teammate besides Tijjani Reijnders and his fellow American Yunus Musah.

More interesting than the numbers are the conversations. Pioli recently held a tactics seminar for a select audience of journalists at Milan’s training ground. According to the veteran reporter and commentator Paolo Condò, the manager talked about shaping his team to encourage opposing goalkeepers to play the ball out to the flank that Pulisic occupies, knowing he will be more diligent tracking back than Leão.

Pulisic’s work rate is admirable, but his goals are what will make him memorable in Milan, and the best so far was the one he scored against Frosinone this month. Milan were a goal up but struggling against opponents who have bloodied a few noses since returning to Serie A. Morale was low after a midweek defeat to Dortmund left Pioli’s side bottom of their Champions League group.

When goalkeeper Mike Maignan sent a long ball over the Frosinone defence, Pulisic had everything to do. Even after taming the ball with one touch, he still had two defenders on his heels and not the pace to run away from them. The composure Pulisic showed to hold off the first pair and shield the ball from a late-arriving third were impressive. His no-look chip to put the ball into the net, knowing some lift was required to get it past the three opponents now stood between him and the goal, was spectacular.

The renowned Italian sporting director Walter Sabatini, who has worked at Roma, Lazio and Inter, and recently took up a position at Salernitana, was spellbound. “That act alone is worth three 4-0 wins,” he said. “It was unreal, beautiful, I want to call it deceitful [how he tricked the defenders].”

In a summer when Milan overhauled its squad, bringing in not only Pulisic but also Reijnders, Musah, Samuel Chukwueze, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Noah Okafor and Marco Pellegrino at a combined cost of more than $110m, it is not hyperbole to say that the first of those has been the most impressive. Without Pulisic’s goals and assists, Leão’s absence would have been a lot more painful.

As it is, for all the criticisms aimed at Pioli by a section of the fanbase, Milan still sit third in Serie A – nine points behind Inter but also five points clear of fifth place. The manager has repeatedly insisted that finishing in the top four is the primary objective but that he would like to do “something more”. A deep run in the Europa League could offer a path to making this season feel like more of a success.

For Pulisic individually, there are further targets to pursue. “I want to be more open,” he told Gazzetta in an interview early this season, “more extroverted, speak in Italian maybe. Italy will help me.”

So far, his limited interactions with the press have all been in English but these are early days. Between covering for injured teammates and being required to fill a leadership role on a new team in a new country, Milan’s 25-year-old senator has had plenty on his plate.