After Disarray in Milan, 'Captain America' Is Home and Ready to Turn the Page

NEW YORK -- Twenty-one hours after being booed off a soccer field in Italy, after his half-season from hell ended without a goal in 19 consecutive matches, Christian Pulisic emerged from the back seat of a taxi in Manhattan, saw a throng of adoring children and flashed a smile.

He was hours removed from a trans-Atlantic flight the morning after he and AC Milan fell short of the Champions League. As he slept one last time at his home in Milan, Italian news organizations branded the team’s collapse a “nightmare” and “disaster.” While in transit Monday morning, his coach was fired and his club cleaned house amid fan outrage.

To the dozens of children who lined Fulton Street at South Street Seaport, however, he was still Captain America. As he waded through a crowd, surrounded by four security guards and dozens of cameras, phones and sharpies shot into the air.

Pulisic looked tired and at times overwhelmed at this public event organized by Puma, but the teenagers who cracked jokes or tried to dap him up brought grins to his face.

“It definitely brightens my spirits,” he said in an interview an hour later.

And it was, in a way, the perfect escape from Italian frustration, the perfect start to a legacy-defining World Cup summer.

“I’m turning the page now,” Pulisic said in a quiet corner at KidSuper Studios in Brooklyn, where he showcased the custom soccer shoes he will wear next month. “Obviously I have to focus on what’s ahead of me, the World Cup, and give my best for USA.”

The barrage of promotional events, of media and photo shoots, he added, “definitely allows me to do that.”

On Tuesday, he was officially announced as a member of the U.S. roster for the World Cup. With tens of millions of Americans watching, he will be expected to carry the U.S. men’s national team into the knockout rounds. He feels like his whole career has been building toward this pressure-packed moment. He wants, desperately, to meet it.

But the monthslong buildup to it has been inauspicious.

After a flying start to the season at AC Milan, Pulisic began sputtering in January. He has not scored a goal in 2026. The drought will soon hit five months, and is the longest of his soccer-playing life.

It coincided with Milan’s slip out of the Serie A top four. After Milan’s stunning loss at home to Cagliari on Sunday, fans jeered and whistled. Players wandered around the field in a daze. “AC Milan Abyss,” read the front page of the daily sports newspaper Tuttosport in Turin.

For Pulisic, who lost his starting spot in May, it was not exactly a cheery send-off.

But some 12 hours later, he was reclining on a private jet hailed by the sportswear company he endorses.

“Puma blessed me,” he said. “I’m very lucky.” And yes, he noted, he “got some rest on the flight.”

So when he landed in New York, and when he ducked into the private taxi, his trademark tiger print and Puma logo atop it, he was ready for whatever awaited.

What awaited were hundreds of fans. There were children (and even a dog) wearing his jerseys. There were musicians and vendors, some handing out posters with his face between the words “Captain” and “America.”

When Pulisic arrived, cameramen flocked to him. Handlers ushered him along, between two lines of children holding out their hands. He soon stood at the head of the pop-up event space as security officers shouted at everyone to back up. One influencer resisted. The mood, momentarily, got tense.

Amid the chaos, it was difficult to escape the sense that Pulisic, an introvert, must have been overwhelmed after such a wild 24 hours; and in an interview later that afternoon, he acknowledged he was.

“But in a good way,” he said. “It’s great.”

In the moments he got to pause and breathe, he looked out toward the East River and thought about “how far the sport has come in the last decade.”

“It’s crazy,” he said. “Seeing how much joy and excitement people have for this World Cup coming up, it makes me happy. It’s pretty awesome to see.”

That was the source of the smile that overtook his face as he gave high-fives, as he handed out tiger tattoo sleeves from the window of a fake food truck, as he asked elementary-school-aged children to roar like tigers.

There were countless small moments that took his mind away from Italy, to the present. One camerawoman told him that she went to high school with his cousin. Another reporter said her last name was Pulisic, “and I was in shock,” Christian Pulisic later recalled. “I didn’t know there were any other Pulisics in the world. Her family’s from the same island in Croatia. It’s insane. I literally just met a relative, probably.”

He capped the event by signing hundreds of autographs. Then he dipped back into the taxi, cruised across the Brooklyn Bridge, and greeted Colm Dillane, aka KidSuper, the New York designer behind the soccer shoes Pulisic will wear this summer.

Pulisic himself was involved in the design of the shoes, which are blue with white stars. A “7” and “8” are patterned on the insoles, out of sight except for when Pulisic tugs on the boots before a World Cup game. They are the numbers his parents wore as soccer players.

“Having my parents close to me,” he said, will be “special” when he steps into the spotlight this summer.

After that second event, Pulisic said, he would go connect with his U.S. teammates. They flew to Atlanta on Wednesday to begin training for the World Cup at U.S. Soccer’s new national training center in Fayetteville, Georgia.

It seems like a lot, but “the first couple days are definitely more relaxed, I think,” Pulisic said of the camp. And he prefers the nonstop nature to a quick vacation. “Grind it out,” he said. “This is the best tournament in the world. Once it’s all said and done, then I can get my rest.”

And the goal drought? Is it weighing on him?

“No. Not at all. Not at all,” he said.

It seemed distant amid Manhattan skyscrapers and Brooklyn buzz, as his World Cup journey began.

“Things will change real quick,” Pulisic said with self-assurance. “Once you get one -- I know how this sport goes. It’s been a difficult season, for everyone. But we move forward.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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