Christian Pulisic rekindles feud with USMNT legends? Milan jewel sparks controversy by leaving Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard out of ultimate USMNT side
When Christian Pulisic sat down with CBS Sports’ Kickin’ It host Kate Scott this week, few expected his casual answers to cause another storm back home. But the USMNT captain, now thriving at Milan, once again found himself at the center of a debate involving three of the biggest names in American soccer history — Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard.
It wasn’t about goals or trophies this time. It was about names — the five names Pulisic chose when asked to pick his ultimate USMNT five-a-side team. His selections, made “on the spot,” as he described it, immediately reignited speculation that the tension between generations in the U.S. men’s setup hadn’t fully cooled. He smiled as he spoke, but fans noticed who wasn’t on his list. And for some, that said more than anything else.
To understand why Pulisic’s lighthearted interview struck a nerve, one has to revisit the events of last summer. After an exhausting European campaign, the forward chose to skip the 2025 Gold Cup, citing the need to rest and prepare for the road toward the 2026 World Cup.
His decision was met with immediate backlash — particularly from the old guard. Landon Donovan criticized modern players’ ‘lack of prioritization’ toward national duty: “If you don’t want to take this as a professional soccer player… then don’t come in.” Though Donovan never named Pulisic directly, the implication was unmistakable. Soon after, Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey echoed similar sentiments, emphasizing the need for unity and accountability within the national team.
The 27-year-old, however, didn’t hold back in his response. On the Call It What You Want podcast, he fired back: “To question my commitment… that’s way out of line.” His father, Mark Pulisic, went even further, accusing Donovan of hypocrisy for his own 2013 national team sabbatical — a post that the Rossoneri star notably “liked” on social media, effectively planting the family’s flag in the debate. Months later, it seemed the controversy had passed. Until this week.
The five-a-side that rekindled old flames
Asked to name his “dream USMNT five-a-side team” during his CBS interview, Pulisic didn’t hesitate. “On the spot, let’s go with our guy Brad Guzan,” he began. “Let’s give a shout-out to him recently retiring. That’s my guy. He had an amazing career. So we’ll stick him in goal.” Then came the rest of his list: “I’m just gonna go more recent because they’re my guys. Weston [McKennie], Tyler [Adams], me, Brad [Guzan], and then put a big defender in there like [Oguchi] Onyewu.”
Dempsey, Howard, and Donovan — three men widely regarded as the greatest American players of their generation — were nowhere to be found. When Scott pointed out their absence, the winger smiled and explained, “I had to do it on the spot. There’s a lot of good names out there. They were just my first thoughts.”
But for many observers, the omission wasn’t random. Coming off a period of public disagreement with the very legends he’d left out, the picks looked more deliberate than spontaneous.