‘Selfless leader’ Christian Pulisic reprises Captain America role for USMNT as Gregg Berhalter salutes’ highly skilled’ skipper after dream start to 2024 Copa against Bolivia

The United States got their quest for Copa America glory off to the perfect start when facing Bolivia in their tournament opener. Pulisic was handed the armband for that contest and proceeded to deliver a goal and assist in an important 2-0 win.

Head coach Gregg Berhalter was full of praise for his inspirational skipper afterwards, telling reporters: “He's a selfless leader. He goes out and competes and works, works really hard and that helps the team and then you add to the fact that he's highly skilled and can make plays on the offensive end and create chances on the offensive end. It's a great combination, and what you see is him supporting his teammates, him backing guys, him pushing guys. To me, it was an outstanding performance. He got coach's man of the match and it was much deserved.”

The USMNT could have run out more convincing winners on the day, with Berhalter adding on the room for improvement within his ranks: “We'll always look at chance creation as a marker of performance, and I think we created enough chances. And on most days, those chances are going to go in - and today they didn't, and that's fine. I think we're pleased with the result. The game was never in doubt, and I think it's a good starting point on which to build throughout this tournament.”

He went on to say: “For us, it's just about analyzing and improving. I talked about one of our objectives throughout this tournament was to keep trying to get better. I like the performance for an opening game against a difficult opponent. We're in a good position.”

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Pulisic and Co are now heading to Atlanta for their second Group C fixture against Panama, with that match taking place on Thursday. They will hope to have done enough by the end of that encounter to have reached the knockout stages, with a final outing against Uruguay in Kansas City to come on July 1.