United States forward Christian Pulisic could only watch from the bench as Belgium extinguished his team’s World Cup bid, ending a tournament in which the American star was hobbled by injuries and largely ineffective.<\/p>\n
The most accomplished U.S. striker, Pulisic was held scoreless in his second World Cup. He has 33 goals in 90 international appearances but has scored just once in eight World Cup games \u2014 against Iran in the group stage in 2022.<\/p>\n
For the second time in this World Cup, Pulisic left a match in the second half with an injury, leaving Monday’s 4-1 loss to Belgium after twisting his right ankle when he extended for a shot attempt and hit the boot of Belgium captain Youri Tielemans in the 52nd minute.<\/p>\n
After spending a few moments lying on the pitch, Pulisic began favoring the foot and was replaced in the 59th by Sebastian Berhalter with the U.S. trailing 3-1.<\/p>\n
Having to come out of the game was “difficult for me to deal with,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I felt really good this summer with the guys and I thought my level was high,” Pulisic said. “It\u2019s disappointing I didn\u2019t quite have the moments I was hoping to and to try to help us to get over this next step of beating a really good team.”<\/p>\n
(Photo by John Dorton\/USSF\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said after the game he hoped Pulisic’s injury was nothing serious and that Pulisic would be able to reintegrate with his club, AC Milan. Players typically get 21 days off after the end of the World Cup before having to report to their clubs.<\/p>\n Pulisic was slowed by a calf injury during the group stage. After a sparkling first half in the first U.S. game, a 4-1 victory over Paraguay, he sat for the rest of the match due to stiffness from a calf injury incurred in training.<\/p>\n (Photo by Jared C. Tilton – FIFA\/FIFA via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY United States forward Christian Pulisic could only watch from the bench as Belgium extinguished his team’s World Cup bid, ending a tournament in which the American star was hobbled by injuries and largely ineffective. The most accomplished U.S. striker, Pulisic was held scoreless in his second World Cup. He has 33 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}