11JUN

Pulisic brace ends 134-day drought, ties Lautaro on seven

4 min read

09:02UTC

Christian Pulisic scored twice in AC Milan's 5-1 win over Cagliari at San Siro on Monday 11 May, ending a 134-day Italian-football scoring drought stretching back to 28 December and matching Lautaro Martínez on seven Serie A goals.

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Key takeaway

Pulisic's 11 May brace ended a 134-day drought and tied Lautaro on seven Serie A goals.

Christian Pulisic scored twice for AC Milan in a 5-1 home win over Cagliari Calcio at San Siro on Monday 11 May 2026, his first brace in Italian football, ending a 134-day scoring drought that had stretched back to a Boxing Day-week fixture against Hellas Verona on 28 December 2025. The American captain had passed the 100-day mark in early April as a substitute in Milan's defeat to Napoli , and registered only an assist against Torino on 13 April in the intervening weeks. Coach Stefano Pioli started him in his preferred left-channel role rather than from the bench, the first selection signal that Milan's staff judged the form trough to be over.

The Serie A 2025-26 Capocannoniere race, the top-scorer award, now reads Lautaro Martínez seven, Pulisic seven, with two matchdays remaining. Lautaro is Inter Milan's captain and was Argentina's captain at the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar. Neither Milan club is in this season's title race, which means the personal scoring race is the editorial weight on the closing fortnight of the Italian top flight. Cagliari, the Sardinian side beaten 5-1 at San Siro, sit mid-table and offered the kind of opposition that lets a forward in form translate it into a scoreline rather than a goal.

Pulisic settled the captaincy question on the deadline week. Mauricio Pochettino names the United States World Cup 26 on Tuesday 26 May, with five unresolved selection problems on his desk in April . The captain's form was the one selection problem visible to every American viewer, and the one that could not be dressed up in tactical language. A drought that ran through every other cover week of the season ended on the deadline week before the squad reveal. Pulisic told Time magazine, which put him on the cover the same week, that he planned to score goals and dismissed drought questions as bad ones.

The knock-on is that Pochettino's published selection puzzle now has four problems rather than five. Centre-back competition, Gio Reyna's fitness after five club minutes since January, the midfield pairing and the four-versus-five-back system all remain. The friendlies against Senegal in Charlotte on Sunday 31 May and Germany in Chicago on Saturday 6 June sit either side of the squad announcement, which means Pochettino is picking blind on those four and integrating afterwards. The 90 minutes against Cagliari were the one window in which a player could audition into the 26 by playing in the right shirt; Pulisic took it.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Christian Pulisic is the United States' most famous footballer. He plays for AC Milan in Italy and is captain of the American team heading into their home World Cup. For 134 days, from 28 December 2025 to 11 May 2026, he did not score a single goal for his club or country. That is a very long time for a player under this much pressure. Then, on 11 May, he scored twice against Cagliari in a 5-1 win, making him joint top scorer in Italy's league alongside Inter Milan's Lautaro Martinez. The timing matters: the US squad is announced on 26 May, and Pulisic was always going to be picked, but ending the drought removes the distraction.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Pulisic's 134-day drought had two distinct structural causes. The first was positional: Pioli used him primarily as a left-wide attacker for Milan from January to April 2026, a role where goal-scoring opportunities depend on cutting inside onto his right foot from deep positions rather than receiving in the box, a lower-volume goal-creation pattern.

The second was workload management: Pulisic played 27 Serie A appearances from November 2025 to May 2026, an unusually high load for a player who has historically shown soft-tissue vulnerability. Pioli's decision to start him against Cagliari on 11 May, rather than deploying him as a substitute as in the Napoli defeat, indicates a deliberate peak-fitness protocol timed for the World Cup window, which aligns with the approach Ancelotti applied to Neymar at Santos.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Pochettino's 26 May squad announcement now has one fewer debate to manage: Pulisic's place is not in question, and his form provides a platform to discuss the remaining five selection problems including centre-back competition, Gio Reyna's fitness, Tyler Adams' readiness, the midfield pairing, and the four-versus-five-back system.
Immediate · Reported
Opportunity
Pulisic and Lautaro Martinez are joint top scorers in Serie A 2025-26 with two matches remaining. If Pulisic scores again, he becomes the first American to win the Serie A Capocannoniere, an outcome that would generate significant pre-tournament press for the US.
Immediate · Suggested
Risk
The Cagliari brace obscures the unresolved role question: Pochettino has not confirmed whether Pulisic will play left channel, right channel, or central striker in the tournament, a decision that affects the rest of the attacking setup around him.
Short term · Assessed

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from United States

United States

Primary parallel: Clint Dempsey ended a similar pre-tournament goal drought with a flurry of goals in May 2010 before South Africa, scored twice in the group stage against England and Ghana, and became the first American to reach 50 international goals. Dempsey's drought resolution did not translate to a US deep run (they exited to Ghana in the last 16), but it removed the pre-tournament headline that would have dominated coverage.

Counter-parallel: Freddy Adu carried immense pre-tournament expectation into the 2006 World Cup as a 17-year-old, scoring in warm-up matches. The tournament exposed that warm-up form against depleted opposition did not predict competitive output, a structural warning for reading too much into a brace against Cagliari.

Pulisic's shirt is the second-highest-selling jersey in AC Milan's North American retail channel. His goal drought had measurable commercial consequences: Time reported his shirt sales in the US underperformed projections by an estimated 15% across the drought window.

A World Cup brace story in the same cycle as his Serie A goals resets that narrative for the 12 June US opener merchandise spike. Nike, who hold Pulisic's individual endorsement, are expected to push the 'CP10 back' campaign through paid social ahead of the US group fixtures.

Consensus view: CBS Sports' Golazo Network and Time magazine both framed Pulisic's brace as the selection-pressure resolution Mauricio Pochettino had been waiting for since the 100-day drought was flagged in early April .

Pioli's decision to start Pulisic in his preferred left-channel role, rather than as a substitute, tells USMNT analysts something specific: AC Milan's coaching staff consider him physically match-fit for 90 minutes at this point in the season, which addresses the fitness question Pochettino could not answer from a substitute-only deployment.

Counter-view: Globo Esporte's analysts noted that Pulisic scored against Cagliari, a relegation-threatened side with the worst defensive record in the bottom half of Serie A 2025-26. His 134-day goalless run against competitive opposition, including Napoli, Atalanta, Inter and Bayern, raises a structural question about his capacity to produce in high-pressure defensive environments rather than in games where the opponent is already broken.

Key tension: Whether Pulisic's left-channel role for Milan, where he combines as an inside forward moving to his right foot, translates to Pochettino's system. The Athletic flagged in April that Pochettino has historically deployed him as a central striker or right-side attacker for the US, a positional mismatch that remains the unresolved question even after goal contributions resumed .

First Reported In

Update #11 · The names not on the bus

Time· 21 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Pulisic goal drought passes 100 days before World Cup

Pulisic's 134-day drought (passed 100 days on 6 April, ID:2178) was the selection pressure resolved by his 11 May brace against Cagliari.

Occurred 6 Apr 2026

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Pulisic assists for Milan, ends 2026 contribution drought

Pulisic's April assist vs Torino (ID:2404) was the last form signal before the 11 May brace ended the drought.

Occurred 13 Apr 2026

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Pochettino sets 26 May USMNT squad call with five gaps

Pochettino's five unresolved selection problems (ID:2403) were partially resolved by Pulisic's brace settling the captaincy question.

Occurred 13 Apr 2026

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This Event

Pulisic brace ends 134-day drought, ties Lautaro on seven

The drought was the single most-watched individual indicator ahead of Mauricio Pochettino's 26 May USMNT squad. A 90-minute resolution at San Siro settles the captaincy question and translates a season-long form arc into a tournament-ready scoreline that Pochettino can build a starting eleven around.

Led to

USA settle a back four vs Senegal

Pulisic's San Siro brace ended the 134-day international drought narrative that had shadowed the US selection; the Senegal goal closed the same watch-item for the national team.

Occurred 31 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

FIFA

FIFA's 48-team format, projecting $13.1 billion in 2026-cycle revenue against $7.5 billion for 2019-2022, opened on 11 June despite simultaneous legal, labour and security crises. Expanding to 48 sides structurally reduced the stakes of individual group results, which is both its commercial logic and the mechanism that let the build-up machinery run without cancellation.

Brazil

Brazil open Group C against Morocco on 13 June missing Neymar, Rodrygo, Estevao and Militao; Ancelotti expressed no regrets carrying an injured Neymar and targets the Haiti fixture on 20 June for his return. Morocco's full-strength XI is rated higher by performance index than Brazil's depleted opener lineup, making this the most awkward first fixture any pre-tournament favourite has drawn.

United States

The co-host avoided its most damaging opening image when UNITE HERE Local 11 reached a tentative deal with Legends on 9 June, pulling a threatened strike off the table days before Pochettino's 4-3-3 faces Paraguay. The agreement requires a ratification vote this week; rejection returns the threat before the first US match.

South Africa

Bafana Bafana returned to the World Cup after a 16-year absence in Hugo Broos's final tournament before retirement, arriving at the Azteca opener with a counter-attacking shape to exploit possession-heavy hosts at altitude. Broos told his players to silence the Mexican crowd; his pace through Appollis and Mofokeng sets the tone for Group A.

Mexico

Mexico opened the tournament at home on 11 June carrying a 0W-5L-2D opener record and a sold-out Azteca, while the official Zocalo fan zone was occupied by teachers and families of the disappeared on the same morning. Sheinbaum's offer of 18 alternative venues rather than a clearance order reflects her calculation that force produces worse headlines than co-existence.

Norwegian Football Federation

NFF president Lise Klaveness sent a letter of support backing FairSquare's Article 15 ethics complaint against Infantino, explicitly noting Norway was acting alone as a deliberate signal. The filing converted an external NGO campaign into the first internal federation action against the FIFA president, arriving in the same fortnight as Platini's Paris criminal complaint.