The tiny village of Tackley, eight miles north of Oxford, has probably not nurtured too many elite sportspeople, but it was in the English countryside that Christian Pulisic caught the football bug for good.



“It was only one year, but it you look back it was what propelled him into playing the game,” says Mark Pulisic of a spell that came about when his wife, Kelley, received a Fulbright scholarship to work abroad on a teaching exchange. Their son, who was about to turn seven, had already shown a keen interest in the sport but it blossomed in the bucolic surroundings of their new home.

“Christian went and played for a nearby club team called Brackley Town [whose senior team play in England’s sixth tier],” Mark remembers. “The coach, Robin Walker, was a real influence, and we’re still friends to this day. Christian went to play in tournaments and really fell in love, became obsessed with the sport. He played every day at school and after school, going out into the playground and kicking the ball around with kids of any age.”

Mark also took Christian to watch English league clubs at all levels – from Manchester United and Tottenham to lower-division sides. It must have been a thrilling experience for a youngster from Hershey, Pennsylvania, but in reality it simply awoke something that already lay within. Christian’s rise to the Borussia Dortmund first-team squad, and subsequently to Jürgen Klinsmann’s Copa América roster, is in many ways a very American tale.

Doug Harris was among those smiling when Pulisic, slotting his chance past the Bolivia goalkeeper Guillermo Vizcarra as if swatting aside an insect, became the US national team’s youngest modern goalscorer at 17 years, 253 days on 28 May. Harris, the president and co-founder of PA Classics, the club based in Manheim, at which Pulisic’s young career really kicked on, had seen enough of him to know how he would react to senior international football. The answer, in short: he would hardly change a thing.

“The first time I saw him play, I thought he was a little on the small side,” Harris says of Pulisic, who joined the Classics a couple of years after his return from England. “Then I realised he was playing two years above his age group. The kids were always a foot taller, a bit more physical than he was, but he really learned to refine his ability that way and it was remarkable to watch. His special awareness – where to go, where the ball was going to fall – was just something else, and you could tell right away that he was absolutely fearless.

“I remember watching an academy game and it went into penalties. Straightaway, Christian, the youngest kid by a long way, stepped right up. Big moment, big game, but he had the sheer confidence and mindset that he would score – which he did. Seeing that, I knew there was something unique about his psychological construct.”

Pulisic certainly had suitable teachers. His mother Kelley played football to a high level at university, while Mark Pulisic needs little introduction to those who followed indoor soccer in the 1990s, having scored prolifically during eight years as a professional with Harrisburg Heat.

A nine-year-old Christian Pulisic playing for the PA Classics. Photograph: Christian Pulisic

By the age of five, their son’s speed and athleticism were apparent to his parents but, as with any youngster in the US, there were plenty of sports to try – there was no special desire to nudge him towards following in the family’s footsteps. An interest honed in Oxfordshire was cemented after a spell playing in Detroit, where the family lived while Mark coached the short-lived Detroit Ignition side; when they came back to Pennsylvania a move to the Classics, one of the first US Soccer Development Academies and thus a major player both locally and nationally, seemed a natural choice. Mark Pulisic knew Harris – the pair had coached college sides against one another – and was good friends with the club’s influential director of coaching Steve Klein, soon joining the set-up himself. From there, father and son began a journey whose sense of inevitability grew.

“By then his desire to really concentrate on football – at 10, 11, 12 – was what made the difference,” Mark says. “He never shied away from anything or made excuses. He was never afraid of taking on new challenges, and you see a lot of players in America who find it very difficult to do that, because the US is a very comfortable place. He wanted to be out of his comfort zone at a young age and that’s when I knew there could be something special.”

Mark Pulisic would take Christian to visit European clubs during the summers; he visited at least one of Spain’s giants and spent time with a leading Premier League club’s academy, too. This was more to gain a taste of the environment than to send him overseas too young; his progress had already turned enough heads domestically, and he was appearing for national youth teams by the age of 13, going on to shine in the Residency Programme and playing in competitions such as the one that, eventually, turned Dortmund’s head.

“When he was 15 and playing in the national sides, he realised he had to make the move quickly for the development of his game,” Mark says. “Once, as parents, we felt he was ready and it was something he wanted, we went to visit Dortmund. All of us decided we felt it was the right move and the club was great with us, so we took the plunge. You have to go with your gut feeling.”

It has been almost three years since Christian, whose move was eased by the fact that his grandfather was born in Croatia and he could apply for citizenship, arrived in Germany, although he officially signed at the start of 2015. The whirlwind has gathered pace. Mark travelled with him and currently coaches Dortmund’s Under-10s; the move has been valuable for his career, too, but most important is his proximity to Christian, 3,800 miles from home, in the apartment they share. It is vital, Mark says, to make sure Christian takes time away from the sport – the pair play golf together – or invites friends from the Dortmund Under-19 side round to socialise; it is important, too, to afford him his own space as he gets older and Mark feels that Christian’s time with the Copa America squad will be of benefit, hearing and living among different voices and saving relatively perfunctory WhatsApp messages for father-son chat.

Christian has friends in more exalted places now, too. A winter in Dubai, joining Dortmund’s first-team training camp, led to a place in Thomas Tuchel’s senior squad, and nothing has held him back since. The records have tumbled: he was the youngest foreigner to score in the Bundesliga when opening his account against Hamburg on 17 April; when he scored at Stuttgart six days later, he became the youngest player of any nationality to have scored twice in the division.

“I would never have expected what he’s done and accomplished so far,” Mark says. “To be quite honest, as a parent I wish it hasn’t gone as fast, because we worry about him missing a lot of his teenage childhood, but I can’t have a say in that now. We’re just trying to guide him and help him deal with all that’s happening.”

That concern is helped by the fact that Klinsmann, to whom Christian’s grounding in German methods holds particular appeal, has spoken to him about the handling of his son’s development. Mark trusts Klinsmann, but if the current rate of progress continues, there must be the temptation to pitch Christian in from the start at the Copa, even if not in Friday’s opener against Colombia. “All 23 are ready to play from the beginning on,” Klinsmann said after last week’s win over Ecuador, hardly killing the idea stone dead, and the possibility of Christian playing a starring role against Paraguay in Philadelphia – a game that constitutes something of a homecoming – would certainly be a logical step in the fairytale.

It would also be the latest piece of evidence that the pathway for American youngsters to become big news across the pond has been set. Christian’s is not the first success story to emerge from PA Classics – the 20-year-old midfielder Russell Canouse made his debut for another Bundesliga side, Hoffenheim, in March – but it has captured more imaginations than any other and might just prove to be a landmark.

“Every family connected with our club talks about his achievements,” says Harris. “They tell me how their kids are talking about him, and how it’s renewed a spark in their attitudes towards the game. They’re all up watching, or taping, Bundesliga games and seeing how he is doing. It’s created so much excitement and energy, and it’s been an absolute thrill to ride along with that.”

Perhaps they are saying the same in Tackley and Brackley, too; regardless, it is a story that will sweep plenty more people off their feet in the years to come.