USA boss Gregg Berhalter has played down concerns over Christian Pulisic’s injury woes and insists the forward is just ‘adapting to the demands’ of a different schedule since joining Chelsea.
Pulisic missed the start of the season after suffering a hamstring problem in Chelsea’s FA Cup final defeat to Arsenal and returned at the start of last month, featuring against Crystal Palace, Southampton, Sevilla, Manchester United and Krasnodar.
Another setback followed as Pulisic again went down with a hamstring injury in warm-up prior to Chelsea’s victory at Burnley and the 22-year-old missed the side’s two most recent games leading into the international break.
Asked about the question marks surrounding Pulisic’s fitness in seemingly every international break, Berhalter told ESPN: ‘I don’t see it like that. ‘I really see it as a young player who is just adapting to the demands of a different game, a different schedule.
‘When you get injured, when you have a muscle injury, it takes you a while to get fully fit and recover and this is part of his recovery process.
‘I have no doubt that he’s going to be a player that is fit for a very long period of time when he gets through this period.’
Pulisic is listed as a ‘day-to-day’ member of Berhalter’s squad heading into USA’s double-header and it’s unclear whether the attacker will feature in either friendly.
‘Christian is in camp and is listed as day-to-day,’ Berhalter told Fox Sports. ‘It says a lot about Christian that he wasn’t playing for Chelsea but wanted to come into this camp and be around the team. ‘His status is day-to-day.’
