Кристиан Пулишич гэмтснээр АНУ-ын шигшээ баг ДАШТ-ийг орхилоо

HERSHEY, Pa. — “Aww f— me,” said the voice next to me at the bar.

Or to paraphrase a famous poem: Somewhere in Belgium, men are laughing and in Seattle, their fans did shout. But there was no joy in Chocolateville because the mighty Pulisic had subbed out.

Christian Pulisic, the pride and joy of Hershey, Pa., was leaving the game with a bum ankle in the second half, and the United States was headed for a 4-1 loss against Belgium in the knockout round of 16.

Talk about a buzzkill.

With the World Cup in North America and the USMNT advancing past the first stage of an elongated knockout round, I came to Hershey to learn a little more about “Captain America” and to watch the game with his adoring hometown fans. While I got educated on how Pulisic became the small-town kid who went global, not all stories finish on a high note.

After a full day of running around various towns in the area, talking to people who knew him (or of him), visiting the Hershey museum and company superstore, shopping at the soccer store where he used to go, the actual game finally began. There was no official watch party in town — the Hershey Harrisburg Sports & Events Authority tried to get an official FIFA “Fan Zone” there, though it didn’t pan out — but you can bet most TVs from Harrisburg to Lancaster were tuned into the game.

I started at a watch party seven miles out of town with a local youth soccer club, moved onto a distillery in Hershey where I drank a “Hometown Hero” (essentially a chocolate martini) and ended up at a packed bar on W. Chocolate Avenue.

On Monday night, there wasn’t a seat to be had at Primanti Bros. The bar was festooned with flag decorations, everyone was still dressed for July 4, and all eyes were on the TVs showing the U.S. men’s soccer team. It was a perfect setup for a celebration. I imagined fans flooding the street under the Hershey Kiss-topped lights.

But instead of seeing their local boy break down the Belgian defense, they saw him broken down on the bench, his head in his hands. An opportunity wasted. A hopeful story with a sad ending.

Patrick Scheib, a 21-year-old rising senior at Widener University in nearby Chester, was the aforementioned voice next to me at the bar. He had been living the lifestyle of a die-hard soccer fan while studying in Spain this past semester. He knows the game, so he was disappointed, but not totally surprised.

“He’s the key to the team,” he said after Pulisic left the game. “Everyone is young around him.”

Pulisic had a rough go of it before he got injured. Which explains why the team seemed so flat. Still, Scheib wasn’t despondent.

“The next World Cup will be better,” he said, echoing words that have been said since 1994.

While Pulisic is still loved in Hershey, Manheim, Lancaster, Harrisburg, really anywhere in Central Pennsylvania, he was getting roasted in the aftermath for a subpar, injury-marred World Cup — no goals and a lot of limping — and that should continue on sports talk shows all week until they pivot to the Dallas Cowboys’ training camp preview.

In 2030, when the World Cup is held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, Pulisic will be careening toward 32. Maybe he’ll still be in his prime, and maybe this core will have grown up around him. But there are no guarantees.

Still, perhaps by then, he’ll have his picture up at Fenicci’s.

On Sunday night, I ponied up to the bar at Fenicci’s of Hershey, which has been around since 1935. On the wall near my seat was a collection of framed photographs, most of them faded memories of local heroes like the Hershey Bears hockey team or Joe Paterno, along with the usual array of celebrities who once passed through town. I asked my bartender Samantha why Pulisic wasn’t up there and she was flummoxed. No one had ever asked her that before. I felt a little like “Buggin’ Out” in “Do the Right Thing.”

Can we get a soccer player up on the wall?

Despite his celebrity and the town’s small size (population under 14,000), you won’t find his picture as you enter Hershey on Fishburn Road. But you will see a giant anthropomorphic Hershey’s Kiss.

Pulisic will never be the most famous former resident of Hershey because the town is named for that guy, you know, Milton Hershey. It’s a company town, still.

But if you want to see a giant picture of Pulisic, you can go to Hershey’s Chocolate World, where his face greets you at the entrance. And once you step through the doors of the 2,500-square-foot store, you’ll find a giant “Pulisic’s” chocolate bar that the company produced for the World Cup.

Christian Pulisic’s face adorns the entrance to a giant Hershey’s store. (Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)

Pulisic and his hometown company signed a marketing deal in 2018, and the company turned up the noise around him for this tournament.

They made 5,000 of the specially wrapped candy bars to give out in Hershey and at a pop-up spot for the World Cup games in Philadelphia. Hershey’s put up Pulisic billboards in Philadelphia — including new ones on Monday — and in the cities the USMNT played in on the West Coast. The company tied in its 2026 ad campaign “It’s Your Happy Place” to Pulisic being from its city.

“Have you ever heard of the pride of Hershey?” a chocolatier asks in a commercial before listing off his accomplishments and adding, “But that’s not why we love him. We love him because he’s one of us.”

That’s especially true in Manheim, about a half-hour away from Hershey, where the yogurt company Chobani recently put up a banner honoring him at the complex for his club soccer program, PA Classics. Pulisic donated money and his design ideas to the club, and it’s now called the “Pulisic Stomping Grounds.”

I went there on Monday morning. The Chobani banner had been partially knocked down by a thunderstorm over the weekend and the park was mostly empty. Well, except for Olivia Shertzer.

Shertzer, a rising senior fullback on the West Virginia University women’s soccer team, was there by herself working on individual drills before reporting back to Morgantown this week to prepare for her season. She is a former club player at PA Classics who wants to play professionally when she graduates, so she is thankful that Pulisic donated the money to improve the complex by adding smaller turf practice fields with training aides.

West Virginia University soccer player Olivia Shertzer poses at the “Pulisic Stomping Grounds” in Manheim, Pa. (Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)

Though she has never met Pulisic, when she tells people not from the area where she played club soccer, she invariably brings him up for street cred.

“It’s a little bit of a pull,” she said. “Something that puts you on the map.”

I met up with Doug Harris at a sports bar in Lancaster. Harris is the president of PA Classics, and he first saw Pulisic about 20 years ago when he was an elementary schooler who was new to the program, joining up with his father, Mark, after they returned to the area.

Harris said whenever he pulled up to one of Pulisic’s games back then, he could always spot him.

“He was the smallest on the field,” he said with a smile.

Christian Pulisic was always slight, but Mark Pulisic, a former pro soccer player who went into coaching, wanted his son to play up two levels, so he that heightened the size disparity. That went against the norm with the club, but it made sense. He had such a hunger for the game, and an advanced IQ, to go along with his skills. Size didn’t matter.

The younger Pulisic just couldn’t play enough soccer and eventually he grew out of the program and Central Pennsylvania.

So he went off to Germany to train with the Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund as a teenager. A year later, Harris found himself in Munich for work when Mark Pulisic called him to let him know that his son was getting called up to the first team. He was just a couple years out of playing for PA Classics. Harris took a train over to watch him train.

When it came time for Pulisic to play his first game, Harris was at a bar in another city watching with the locals. The fans didn’t know who Pulisic was, but they would soon find out.

Doug Harris poses with a cardboard version of Christian Pulisic. (Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)

Years later, Harris is proud his club had a role in Pulisic making it this far by creating an environment for him to grow. But he’s quick to deflect.

“He’s the one that did this, so I don’t take any credit, and I know the coaches don’t take any any credit for that,” he said.

We talked at the end of the Spain-Portugal game, when Harris was wary of Belgium but optimistic.

“The Belgian players are very creative and they’re very technical, so if we can anticipate a little bit, the counter is going to be there,” he said. “Because I don’t see them sitting back.”

Belgium did not sit back, but the U.S. did not really anticipate, and Pulisic, despite all the promise and all the work he did to get here, simply did not play like a star.

Now, he will rest up, go back to AC Milan in the fall, and in two years, the general public could hear from him again if he’s one of the elder statesman on the 2028 Olympic team in Los Angeles. In 2030, we should see him again on this stage. Maybe things will end differently. Maybe not.

I spent most of the day talking with people about how great Pulisic is and what he means to Hershey and Central Pennsylvania, and the results of this game didn’t change any of that. His story will live on. But while the greats in the tournament like Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe play on, the latest image we have of Pulisic is of him in misery on the bench.

He was not in his happy place.