{"id":144126,"date":"2025-08-14T04:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T04:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/144126\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T04:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T04:00:10","slug":"christian-pulisic-blasts-criticisms-from-landon-donovan-ex-usmnt-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/144126\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Pulisic blasts criticisms from Landon Donovan, ex-USMNT players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two U.S. Men\u2019s National Team stars hit out at their critics who questioned them for not participating in the Gold Cup earlier this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah fired back at the players-turned-media pundits during a newly released episode of the Paramount+ documentary, \u201cPulisic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American soccer star faced criticism from the likes of Landon Donovan and other USMNT alumni for doing \u201cthe best thing for myself\u201d and not participating in the summer Gold Cup tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ACChristian Pulisic clapped back at USMNT stars. REUTERS<\/p>\n

In the eighth episode, which focuses on the national team\u2019s struggles, Pulisic defended his decision with some pointed language.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say the most annoying thing, and for me, the biggest cop-out of all time, is when, especially, you know, all pundits want to say: \u2018They didn\u2019t want it. They didn\u2019t have the heart, you know, back in our day, we would fight and we would die on that field,\u2019\u201d Pulisic said.<\/p>\n

Weah had a similar feeling when he discussed the criticism, taking it a step further.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose guys are chasing checks, and for me, I just feel like they\u2019re really evil, honestly, because they\u2019ve been players, and they know what it\u2019s like when you\u2019re getting bashed,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are the same guys that will turn around and shake your hand and try to be friendly with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, I respect all of them, I mean, they were the players I looked up to,\u201d Weah added. \u201cBut quite frankly, the guys before us didn\u2019t win anything either.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ACChristian Pulisic REUTERS<\/p>\n

The spat between some of the current players and the former ones took a very public turn earlier this year when Donovan said on air, \u201cI can\u2019t help but think about some of our guys on vacation, not wanting to play in the Gold Cup. It\u2019s pissing me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donovan did not name any players specifically, but Pulisic\u2019s father, Mark, fired back with a post on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States went on to lose to Mexico, 2-1, in the Gold Cup final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two U.S. Men\u2019s National Team stars hit out at their critics who questioned them for not participating in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[85471,221,62,67,132,68,33686],"class_list":{"0":"post-144126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-christian-pulisic","9":"tag-soccer","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-us-mens-national-team"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115025125320539373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}