Two of USA’s most prominent players, Michael Bradley and Christian Pulisic, have brushed off an extraordinary attack from Alexi Lalas after the player turned pundit attacked the team’s struggles to qualify for the World Cup.

After a string of mediocre results, the US could face a playoff against Syria or Australia to qualify for next year’s tournament – if they make it that far in the first place. On Sunday, Lalas called the team ‘a bunch of soft, underperforming, tattooed millionaires’, as well as calling our players individually - including Bradley and Pulisic.

Lalas said Bradley should “play better” and was too “zen”. On Wednesday, the Toronto FC midfielder sounded, well, zen when asked about Lalas’s comments.

“Part of being an athlete, a competitor is understanding that everybody has an opinion, especially in the world today,” Bradley told SportsNet. “Everybody has a platform to fire off a hot take whenever they want. It’s life. You’re in the wrong business if that throws you off.

“You use it in the right ways, you use it as motivation. You make sure you don’t forget who the [critics] along the way are who had a lot to say. One of the recent [sayings] that I’ve seen that I like is, ‘The lion doesn’t care about the opinion of the sheep.’ I’ll leave it at that.”

Bradley’s Toronto team-mate, Jozy Altidore, was also criticized by Lalas and addressed the issue in a tweet: “I don’t even have any tattoos,” he wrote, although he did not deny he was a millionaire.

Lalas also called out arguably the US’s most talented player, the Borussia Dortmund teenager Christian Pulisic, whom he labelled a “wonder boy”.

“I heard about it,” said Pulisic. “I am not going to lose sleep about what Alexi Lalas has to say about us. He can say what he wants.”

The US next face Panama and Trinidad & Tobago. If they win both games they will qualify for Russia 2018.