Christian Pulisic was a soccer phenom in Michigan before the World Cup
From a Northville soccer tryout on Father’s Day to AC Milan, how Christian Pulisic became a Team USA star.
It was a hot day in June, Father’s Day weekend two decades ago, when the Michigan Rush youth soccer team in Northville was holding its tryouts.
There were kids running around, going through drills, parents were lobbying for their sons, and Mark Zathey, then the club’s technical director, his face beet red with only minutes on the clock to pick his team, was approached by an unassuming dad wearing a polo shirt and Dockers.
Mark Pulisic had just moved to Plymouth after becoming head coach of the Detroit Ignition, the now-defunct Major Indoor Soccer League team. His wife, Kelley, also a soccer player, and their two kids, including then-8-year-old Christian, were still in England. Pulisic did not introduce himself as a soccer coach or share anything about his background, though. He simply told Zathey he had identified the Michigan Rush as the team for which he wanted his son to play, even though it meant playing with kids at least a year older.
“He just smiled and goes, ‘I know you’ve heard this 1,000 times before, but my son’s pretty good,’” said Zathey, who coaches at Madonna University. “So he’s asking for his kid to play a year up, and he’s like 8 years old. I say, ‘Listen, man, you’re asking a lot, but I’ll tell you what. We’ll put him on any team in the club, but we’ll owe you zero playing time.”
Christian Pulisic, now 27, is considered one of the top soccer players from North America and is a key member of Team USA, which faces Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday in the knockout round of 32 of the FIFA World Cup at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. He played three years in Michigan, always competing in a higher age group, while his father was with the Ignition before moving back to Pennsylvania.
Zathey introduced Mark Pulisic to Michigan Rush coach Nicholas Deren, whose team had been one of the best U9 teams in Michigan, and explained Pulisic wanted his son to play for the Rush. Pulisic had video of Christian he wanted them to see.
“I say to Mark (Pulisic), ‘Yeah, this team is pretty good, one of the top teams around, so he’s got to be pretty good to make this team.’ I wasn’t trying to scare the guy off,” said Deren, who coached at Detroit Mercy for years and is now director of coaching and technical director of the Novi Jaguars and also is on the Flint City Bucks coaching staff. “He says, ‘I think you’ll like him.’ And then I see this video of him juggling the ball like 6 billion times, and I’m like, ‘He’s good enough.’”
When Christian Pulisic arrived at practice for the first time, coaches and teammates were blown away.
“He joined us mid-August for the first practice, and I’m like, ‘Who is this guy?’” Deren said. “This is the best player I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Zathey was Pulisic’s first Michigan Rush coach, and Deren and Eric Rudland each coached him a season.
“My only claim to fame is I didn’t ruin him,” said Zathey, laughing. “We got going that August, and the kid comes out, and he’s poetry in motion. I just turned to his dad and said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ and he said, ‘I told you he’s pretty good.’ He was pretty special.”
Mark Pulisic then discussed his soccer background with Zathey and the other coaches, and finally, the dots connected. Pulisic didn’t want his son to feel pressured to play soccer so he encouraged him to play basketball and golf, too, and when they’d work on soccer drills at home, it was always with a fun twist, like the two of them trying to chip shots into the garbage can from different angles. The Pulisics, according to Zathey and Deren, hoped their son would not feel burdened by soccer and wanted him to run out of the car to practice eager to play.
His older teammates immediately recognized Pulisic’s talent.
“He was extremely good back then,” said Andrew Murphy, now a coach at Detroit City FC Downriver. “He was about two years younger than we were. We’re getting bigger, he’s still some little guy, and he was miles ahead of everybody. It was crazy. He scored probably a goal a game, at least, and we were playing at a pretty high level at that time.”
Pulisic’s footwork and foot-eye coordination set him apart.
“It was unreal,” Murphy said. “His footwork was next level. The way he could do some skill moves and get that ball into space, finding his teammates and everything like that, he was a phenomenal player back then. And watching him now, you do see a little bit of that out there on the field.”
Deren said that during the first season, the Rush often annihilated teams by double-digit margins, and the team’s young star would score multiple goals. Pulisic was already playing one year up, but they had to schedule teams that were another year older.
“We couldn’t get a game, because he was too good,” Deren said. “He started playing up two years and was still banging in five goals a game.”
It was good experience for Pulisic at that stage to play bigger, stronger players. While he was always the fastest player on the field — Deren said it was like watching Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan go coast to coast — he was forced to develop other aspects of his game, learning to lay the ball off and get the ball back on a give-and-go. This became about problem-solving, Deren said, a skill every athlete needs to do in any competition.
Zathey said Pulisic glided on the field. He looked effortless and never appeared to be struggling. He described him as “floating” above the grass.
“Playing two years up, he stood his own,” said Paul Wiedmaier, a Michigan Rush teammate. “Like Band of Brothers, it’s salute the man, not the rank. He’s really put in the work, and the sky’s the limit. I couldn’t be more proud of him, and I hope he does remember the years that we were battling together.”
Murphy said he learned from watching Pulisic, and he sees evidence of that now as he works with young soccer players.
“It’s helped me become a better coach,” Murphy said. “Looking back at it and seeing the work that he put into it is like, OK, that’s what it takes. It takes so much more than I ever put into it, that’s for sure. There’s a reason why he’s over there in the professional field, and I’m coaching 10-year-olds.”
After Pulisic left Michigan, the family returned to Hershey, Pennsylvania. There, he played for PA Classics before heading to Borussia Dortmund in Germany. Pulisic now plays for AC Milan, but right now, the priority is Team USA.
While his stay in Michigan was brief, it was pivotal to Pulisic’s soccer development. Deren and Zathey, who stay in contact with Mark Pulisic, aren’t taking credit for the player Pulisic is today, but they also know his time with Michigan Rush was an important step in his career.
“People always say, oh, he’s from Hershey, Pennsylvania and played for PA Classics,” Deren said, “but he did that after we developed them for three years. It was awesome, and it was so much fun working with them.”
And now Pulisic will try to lead the U.S. national team to the next round in the World Cup.
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