Christian Pulisic: From the fire pan and into the fire

Christian Pulisic has signed for Chelsea from Borussia Dortmund in a $73 million move. The American has escaped the fire pan, but he might now have been thrust into the fire.

The American darling of football was having a tough time. After striding his way through youth football with verve and excitement, Christian Pulisic suddenly found himself in an unwanted position: unwanted.

The 20-year-old has been the much-championed talent throughout his life. Dortmund very much saw him as their future. And they were not shy in telling him that. He has grown up wanted. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t.

For Pulisic, Jadon Sancho happened. A bright, young Brit, very much the equal of Pulisic across the pond, who rode a wave of celebration and expectation into Dortmund, first startling in substitute appearances and then just stealing Pulisic’s starting job away from him. Pulisic was sat on the bench, watching someone else play out what his career seemingly should have been.

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For the sake of his development, then, action had to be taken. At 20 years of age, Pulisic has reached the point in which playing time is the most precious commodity. And Dortmund can no longer offer him that very thing that he so desperately needs and desires. Change, therefore, must come.

And for Pulisic, change has come. On Wednesday, it was announced that Dortmund and Chelsea had agreed on a $73 million deal for the whippet winger, with a six-month loan seeing him return to Westfalia for the remainder of the season before making a permanent move to the UK in the summer. It is certainly a change, but is it a positive one?

While Pulisic did need to escape Dortmund, or at least drastically change the atmosphere and direction of his development in Dortmund, moving to Chelsea is not necessarily any better. In fact, it could be worse. He might well be jumping out of the fire pan and straight into the fire.

Chelsea are a club renowned for their inability to develop players. They currently have more players out on loan than any other in English football, have spurned the chance to steer the likes of Mohamed Salah, Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku into the transfer window, and tend to select experienced, established and expensive stars over the talent that they already have at their own disposal. Pulisic’s very arrival casts uncertainty over the future of the vastly talented Callum Hudson-Odoi, for instance.

Pulisic may avoid this chasm thanks to his price tag. Although there will be great expectation thrust onto his shoulders to perform, Chelsea must also now offer him the opportunities to play or face the wrath of an increasingly unsettled fan base. But their history is not promising for a player like Pulisic. Plenty of young talents have come and gone in the blue of Chelsea. The same could not be said for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City or Arsenal or Mauricio Pochettino at Liverpool.

Pulisic has escaped Dortmund. For the sake of his career, he had to. But in doing so, he may have unwitting jumped into an even worse situation. Pulisic needs chances. Chelsea do not hand them out willy-nilly. Let’s hope otherwise, but this might not be the career-changing move that Pulisic has been searching for.