Christian Pulisic is supposed to be the face of American soccer. Right now, he looks more like a question mark with shin guards.
A dip in form at club level has carried over to the national team, and with a home World Cup on the horizon, the timing couldn't be worse. The uncomfortable truth is that the USMNT's ceiling in 2026 depends heavily on which version of Pulisic shows up — the player who looks like a genuine difference-maker, or the one who disappears when the stage gets biggest. Those two versions have both existed, and nobody can be fully sure which one turns up when it matters.
His betting value as the standout USMNT attacking threat looks shakier than it did six months ago. That's not pessimism — it's pattern recognition.
Italy's qualifying disaster, Iraq's remarkable return
Across the Atlantic, Italy have done the unthinkable. Again. The Azzurri are out of World Cup qualifying, missing out on another tournament in a failure that's becoming harder and harder to explain away as bad luck. The questions about Italian football's structure, its development pipeline, and its tactical identity aren't getting quieter — they're getting louder with every passing cycle.
The flip side of that chaos? Iraq. After a 40-year absence, they're back at the World Cup. Forty years. That's not just a feel-good angle — it's one of the genuinely compelling stories the global game produces once in a generation. Congo and Sweden also put together qualifying runs worth celebrating, and taken together, these playoffs made a decent case for the expanded World Cup format actually working as intended: more nations, more stories, more genuine drama.
What USMNT fans are really asking
The fan conversation around the USMNT right now is split between cautious optimism and justified anxiety. Lineup debates, World Cup expectations, and the recurring Pulisic question are dominating supporter discussions — and honestly, the panic in some corners isn't entirely unjustified.
A home World Cup buys goodwill and crowd noise. It doesn't fix a star player who hasn't been able to impose himself consistently. The U.S. has time to sort this out, but not unlimited time.
