The United States have confirmed that forward Christian Pulisic fractured his leg during his side’s 4-1 defeat by Belgium in the World Cup last 16.<\/p>\n
Pulisic was substituted in the 59th minute just moments after Belgium scored their third goal in Seattle.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old appeared to suffer the injury early in the second half as he attempted a shot but instead kicked the back of Belgium midfielder Youri Tielemans’ leg.<\/p>\n
“Christian Pulisic has been diagnosed with a microfracture and bone bruise of the tibia\/fibula in his right leg suffered during the match against Belgium,” said a US Soccer federation statement on social media.<\/p>\n
US Soccer and Pulisic’s club team, AC Milan, will collaborate on his recovery plan.<\/p>\n
The US players were widely criticised in the US media after suffering elimination with their heaviest World Cup defeat in 36 years, with Pulisic’s early withdrawal questioned.<\/p>\n
“I was a bit disappointed in Christian Pulisic. Whether he wants to be the star of this team or not, we didn’t see enough from him in this particular game – and, really, the whole World Cup. Little glimpses here and there,” said the US’ all-time leading goal scorer Carli Lloyd.<\/p>\n
Recalling Pulisic’s decision to sit out the Gold Cup in 2025 in order to rest and recover before a World Cup year, she posted on X: “You rest when your playing career is over. Period.”<\/p>\n
Landon Donovan, the all-time US top scorer at men’s World Cups, said: “I would have punched the doctor in the face and said, ‘You’re not taking me off the field’.” <\/p>\n
While US Soccer did not give a timeframe for Pulisic’s recovery, he would not have been able to play had his side progressed to the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
The Athletic reported that Pulisic “will be sidelined for several weeks but not months,” citing multiple people briefed on the diagnosis.<\/p>\n
AC Milan begin their Serie A campaign on 23 August against Torino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States have confirmed that forward Christian Pulisic fractured his leg during his side’s 4-1 defeat by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-753376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}