Christian Pulisic recently took the mic to defend his United States Men's National Team teammate Folarin Balogun, uttering the classic locker-room platitude: "He has done a lot for us; now we will step up for him."
It sounds noble. It sounds like leadership. For a different perspective, read: this related article.
It is actually a symptom of the fatal flaw rotting the USMNT from the inside out: a culture of public coddling that prioritizes protecting feelings over tactical accountability.
The media ate it up, framing Pulisic’s words as a testament to the brotherhood and unity of the "Golden Generation." That is the lazy consensus. The narrative assumes that international soccer matches are won by good vibes and reciprocal loyalty. Similar coverage regarding this has been published by The Athletic.
They aren't. They are won by spatial manipulation, ruthless conversion rates, and tactical cohesion.
By publicizing a pact to "save" Balogun, Pulisic inadvertently exposed a damning reality. The USMNT does not know how to integrate its most expensive attacking asset, and the players are trying to fix a structural, systemic coaching failure with emotional labor.
The Myth of the Isolated Striker
Football pundits love to look at a striker with five touches in a half and blame the midfield. "They aren't feeding him," they cry. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of modern positional play.
In elite modern football—the kind played by Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta, or Luciano Spalletti—a striker is not a passive recipient of service. The striker is the initial trigger for the entire attacking structure.
Look at Erling Haaland at Manchester City. His lack of touches is often a feature, not a bug. His hyper-specific movement creates deep structural panic, pinning two center-backs and vacating the half-spaces for Kevin De Bruyne or Phil Foden.
When Folarin Balogun looks isolated for the USMNT, it is not because the wingers are selfish. It is because the team's tactical framework lacks positional rigidity. Balogun, educated in the highly structured Arsenal academy and refined under Will Still at Reims, thrives on predictable, repeated patterns of play. He expects the ball to arrive in specific zones when he makes specific blind-side runs.
Instead, the USMNT relies on improvised, chaotic attacking sequences. Pulisic cuts inside to create his own shot. Timothy Weah hugs the touchline to whip in hopeful crosses to an empty box. Balogun is left wandering in a tactical wasteland, not because his teammates don't want to pass to him, but because the team's spacing makes passing to him mathematically inefficient.
Emotional Pacts Do Not Create Expected Goals (xG)
Let’s dismantle Pulisic’s premise. "Now we will step up for him."
What does that actually look like on pitch? Does it mean forcing passes into a congested central channel to make Balogun feel involved? Does it mean overcompensating out of possession and abandoning defensive shapes?
Historically, when a national team enters this phase of "playing for an individual," performance metrics crater.
Consider the historical precedent of Argentina trying to "solve" Lionel Messi's international droughts between 2014 and 2018. Midfielders consciously ignored open tactical options to force the ball to their talisman. The result was predictable stagnation and tactical paralysis. Argentina only won the World Cup in 2022 when Lionel Scaloni built a rigid structure where every player executed their specific zonal duties, treating Messi as the apex predator of a functioning machine rather than a charity case to be served.
If the USMNT wants Balogun to score, Pulisic needs to stop talking about stepping up and start demanding better automated patterns from his manager.
The High Cost of the Concacaf Comfort Zone
The USMNT operates under a unique delusion of grandeur fueled by easy victories against regional opposition. Beating nations with a fraction of the USSF's budget in the Nations League creates a false sense of security.
I have watched this program cycle through the same mistakes for a decade. The players form a tight-knit clique. They have known each other since the Under-17 residency programs. They protect each other from criticism.
This corporate "safe space" culture is antithetical to winning at the highest levels of international football.
Go into the dressing room of the French national team or the Italian national team. It is not a fraternity. It is a highly volatile environment of intense internal competition. When Olivier Giroud wasn't getting the ball, he didn't get public reassurances from Kylian Mbappé; he got called out, and he called others out in return. Tension, friction, and brutal honesty drive elite performance.
Pulisic's instinct to shield Balogun from media scrutiny reveals a fear of the pressure cooker. Balogun moved from England to the United States precisely to be the main man, to carry the burden of a nation’s expectations. Treat him like a world-class number nine, not a fragile prospect who needs his teammates to run interference for him in post-match press conferences.
The Structural Fix the USMNT Ignores
To actually fix the Balogun problem, the USMNT must abandon the 4-3-3 template that has become their default ideology.
Balogun’s best statistical season—his 21-goal campaign for Reims in Ligue 1—came in a system that utilized a dynamic attacking midfielder directly behind him, operating in the spaces between the opponent's midfield and defensive lines. He needs a creator who plays with their back to goal, turns, and immediately slides vertical balls into the channels.
The USMNT midfield trio is consistently composed of engines rather than architects. It is a collection of box-to-box runners who excel at ball recovery but lack the elite vision to execute line-breaking passes in the final third.
Balogun’s Structural Compatibility
| System Component | Reims (21 Goals) | USMNT Default |
|---|---|---|
| Attacking Shape | Direct transitions, central verticality | Slow buildup, wide overloads |
| Midfield Profile | Direct playmaker in the ten role | Three interchangeable box-to-box No. 8s |
| Winger Behavior | Inside forwards attacking the box | Traditional wingers holding width |
Forcing a Ferrari to plow a field is a structural failure, not a motivational one. No amount of "stepping up" or working harder will change the fact that the current tactical blueprint treats Balogun like Jozy Altidore, expecting him to hold up long balls against low blocks.
Stop defending him in front of the microphones. Stop treating the national team like a summer camp where everyone gets a turn on the ball. Demolish the tactical framework that isolates the center-forward, or accept that this generation's ceiling is a round-of-16 exit.
