Some character actors at heart are cursed with leading man looks: your Brad Pitts, your Christian Bales, your poor Robert Pattinson being floated as the next James Bond when all he really wants to do is vamp around trying out funny accents and making memes. Guys like these were born to steal a scene or two getting weird with line readings, but their square jaws keep jutting their way into the center of the poster.
This, in Hollywood terms, is Christian Pulisic's problem with the United States men's national team. His attacking talent is so undeniable, the goals and assists so hard to ignore, that he's forced into a headlining role that comes almost as unnaturally to him as trying to mimic human emotions in a zillionth credit card commercial.
Call it the Pulisic paradox: For a decade now, the U.S. has looked worse the more its biggest star is on the ball.
"Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself that I need to do something special where I just need to play the best I can," Pulisic said in 2022, admitting that he has tried to "overperform" for the national team. "I think at times I was overthinking it and trying to be too good in a way that's not necessary. I don't need to, whatever, overcomplicate things."
Hold the phone, because Cavan Sullivan couldn't have picked a better time to arrive on the scene as American soccer's next big thing.
Unlike Pulisic, the bleach-blond 17-year-old Philadelphia Union phenom has never looked ambivalent about superstardom. Called up to the national team for the first time last month, Sullivan scored his debut goal against archrivals Mexico, because of course he did. He acts like he has never played a game that didn't revolve around him or met a fan who didn't love him, which so far has been more or less universally true. Sullivan might be Tom Holland's size, but he has A-list aura, too.
This week, Sullivan and Pulisic joined their first national team camp together, and odds are we'll see both in the lineup against Haiti this weekend. If Pulisic were a different kind of player, you could imagine this leading to drama, but Mauricio Pochettino -- if he sticks around -- should be thanking his lucky lemons that he might have found Pulisic's perfect co-star.
Pulisic's problem isn't that he's bad at soccer. It's that to do the thing he's best at instead of dribbling into trouble in midfield, he needs the people around him to be good, too. His off-ball run numbers have been elite as far back as Chelsea, where Frank Lampard praised his skill at "arriving in the box" -- sneaking in behind a striker to find dangerous pockets of space in front of goal. With the national team, he has rarely had the kind of on-ball creator on the other side of the pitch to find him in that space.
"I know Christian very well. I know what his strengths are," said Gregg Berhalter, speaking on a former USMNT manager podcast with Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley the day after a catastrophic loss to Belgium ended the U.S. men's run at this summer's World Cup. Berhalter overlapped with Pulisic for the better part of eight years while coaching the U.S. "He's a guy that scores a lot of goals by arriving in the penalty box. How often did he get in the penalty box last game, or even in the World Cup?"
Pulisic didn't just come away from the biggest tournament of his life with no goals to show for it -- he didn't even crack his own team's top five players for expected goals. He received a grand total of six passes in the penalty area, 10 fewer than midfielder Weston McKennie, and his four shots left him level with Alex Freeman, a defender. If the USMNT was a Marvel franchise, some studio exec would be putting in frantic calls right now to recast Captain America.
"When you look at the right side of the field, they have to get the ball in the penalty box for Christian to really thrive and arrive, and I don't know if the right side did that too often," Berhalter said on the World Cup podcast.
"His ability to get into the box, his timing is so good. We didn't see much of that, that's for sure," Bradley agreed. "For that to happen, yes, it's got to be that chances are created on the right side, and then he's joining in."
For most of his USMNT career, Pulisic has lined up opposite right wingers like Tim Weah who are better at stretching the lines with depth runs than creating on the ball. Pochettino tried to shake things up by converting fullback Sergiño Dest into a winger and letting McKennie combine with him on the underlap, but they couldn't consistently find Pulisic with a final ball.
Sullivan is an entirely different kind of right winger. He's a bona fide ball-to-feet wide playmaker, a one-man wrecking crew. Just look at the eye-popping run against Chile last month where he collected the ball in his own third and ripped up 80 yards of turf, blowing past tackles on the sideline and slithering all the way to the top of the opponents' box before trying to slip Malik Tillman through on goal.
What a run by Cavan Sullivan 💫 https://t.co/KSrXoDxuLs
— B/R Football (@brfootball) September 30, 2026
Watch him do this stuff every week with his club, and it's impossible not to salivate at the thought of Sullivan pulling the strings for a new-look U.S. team. It's not just the nine goals and seven assists in league play since he switched to the right wing for Philadelphia this summer and went supernova. In his first full season as a pro, Sullivan ranks in the 90th percentile among all MLS wingers for take-ons attempted and expected assists. He's averaging 4.1 progressive carries and 4.7 progressive passes per game -- actions that move the ball 25% of the remaining distance to goal to crack open the defense.
Sullivan's advanced stats are just as glowing. The new soccer app futi, which I co-created, rates players using a model called possession value that measures how much any kind of touch changes a team's chances of scoring or conceding. When you add up the value of everything Sullivan does on the ball, sprinkle in some holistic top-down metrics and scale the total contribution against his tactical role, he earns a futi rating of 76 -- eighth among current MLS wingers of any age, between Timo Werner and Allan Saint-Maximin, and the highest rating for any teenager in MLS history.
If there's one number Pulisic should care about most, it's 10.6%. That's Sullivan's involvement, the percentage of his team's touches he takes while on the pitch, and it's higher than all but five starting attackers in MLS. Even Lionel Messi at Inter Miami doesn't dominate the ball as much as the 17-year-old rookie. In other words, the U.S. might have finally found a true leading man, and he plays exactly the right style and position to let Pulisic pick his moments. While Sullivan starts attacks from the right and cuts inside to dribble across the face of the defense, the left winger is free to slip in behind the striker and find the finishing touch.
That's precisely the role Pulisic plays best. "Back post arriving, he's brilliant, the way that his timing is into the box," U.S. captain Tyler Adams has said. Instead of dropping into midfield to try to play hero ball -- a tendency he has sometimes criticized in his own national team performances -- Pulisic will finally be free to hang around the edges of the frame until he's ready for his close-up.
Sullivan is not the only reason for optimism here. Gio Reyna can create from the right, too, and he was finding his form for Strasbourg this season before he pulled out of this national team camp with yet another injury. His replacement, Jack McGlynn, has been lighting up the Championship for Stoke City with a wand of a left foot. If Pochettino can tuck a pure passer like those guys between the lines while Sullivan draws defenders with his dribbling, Pulisic should have no shortage of space and service.
It all looks good on the page, but whether this comes together on the pitch will depend on the chemistry between the two star wingers. If Pulisic can accept a supporting part while the new kid gets most of the lines, their partnership could be something special.
Acting is reacting, as the old saw goes, and a high-usage playmaker like Sullivan might just be Pulisic's perfect foil.