CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Christian Pulisic says he feels “every game” that he’s going to score, and it’s not too hard to tell he’s getting tired of talking about it.
The best way for the USMNT’s superstar to stop the question from being asked, though, is for him to put the ball in the net — something he last did all the way back in December.
“No matter how bad things are, I like to look at the positive light,” Pulisic said Saturday. “I’ve had this happen before in my career. It’s difficult times. Sometimes one will bounce off your knee and go in. It seems like everything will go in after that. So that’s just the way things work. I feel pretty confident.”
Aside from avoiding any injuries, which coach Mauricio Pochettino pointed out was the first goal of Sunday’s friendly against Senegal, getting Pulisic a goal would qualify as one of the most important things the USMNT could get out of the first of its two sendoff matches.
After two losses to powerhouse opposition in the March window, a result against a formidable Senegal side wouldn’t hurt, either.
Though Senegal doesn’t necessarily have the caché of Belgium and Portugal, who beat the USMNT in March, or Germany, who the U.S. will face next weekend in Chicago, it’s just as good as any of them.
The Teranga Lions won January’s Africa Cup of Nations, though they were later stripped of the title because their players left the field during play to protest a penalty decision.
Their lineup features world-class talent like winger Sadio Mané, striker Nicolas Jackson and center back Kalidou Koulibaly.
“They wouldn’t have won AFCON for no reason, right? I think that’s a testament to their ability they have as a team,” center back Mark McKenzie said. “I think for us, we’re focused on using this as a test, obviously, but at the end of the day, we need to focus on fine-tuning our game, fine-tuning what we want to get across in this tournament.”
A win in a friendly match doesn’t mean anything, and the result comes second to the USMNT getting its tactics right, and trying to settle a few key questions about who should start, including in goal between Matt Freese and Matt Turner.
While Freese has been the clear No. 1 for the last year, the door creaked back open for Turner — the USMNT’s starter in Qatar — when he was in net against Belgium in March.
That, combined with Turner having outplayed Freese in the early part of the MLS season, makes things interesting.
“You obviously wish you had the body of work with the national team in the last year to also rely upon, but I think form at the club is also really, really important,” Turner said. “The club performances are a way you can build that trust with the manager without being fully present, obviously, with the national team.”
Pochettino indicated Saturday he plans to rotate players heavily during the game and try his best to avoid any unnecessary risks.
Given that Senegal plays a different style than Paraguay, the USMNT’s first group stage opponent, it’s best to be careful making assumptions about how one game might carry over to another.
Still, a victory would certainly shift the conversation around the USMNT, and bring some confidence to a group that was deflated back in March.
A Pulisic goal might do the same thing for the team’s biggest public face.
“Of course, any time you get a good result it gives you a bit of confidence,” Pulisic said. “We want to start the game strong and come out with a good result. I’m sure we’re gonna test a couple things, move some guys around. Maybe it won’t look exactly as it would in [World Cup] games, but we want to use this to try to play, to put on a good performance, to get a good result.”
