Article: American soccer is too cautious; stop worrying about Christian Pulisic

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Hype can go too far, but if it breaks a player to the point that he is no longer himself, then that player was never worthy of his hype to begin with.

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Pulisic is on Donovan’s track, not Adu’s. Before you’d ever heard his name he was playing international travel matches against academy teams from Espanyol, FC Barcelona and Atlético Madrid. He was guest playing in England. He was playing up with the U17 MNT against Brazil and Portugal and ripping out each game’s vital organs and rearranging them how he wanted them. He was dealing with the pressure of holding up an attack at a U17 World Cup. He was living thousands of miles from home in an apartment in the industrial tangle of a major German city and genuinely thriving under it. He was learning another language, playing in reserve matches, training with a Champions League team. And then playing for that Champions League team.

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Adu’s career was always smoke, twisting and flitting around preconceptions and desires and then disappearing as quietly as it came. Pulisic’s career, to this point, is brick and mortar. It is the foundation of the house Adu never had the chance to build.

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