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There’s a saying on Madison Avenue: Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.
The ferocious pile-on of Christian Pulisic is partly due to him being over-marketed during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
A slew of national ad campaigns portraying Pulisic as “Captain America” and “the LeBron James of American soccer” backfired when the star flopped on the big stage. That’s what James did in the 2011 and 2014 NBA Finals. That’s what Pulisic did this year, going goalless at the World Cup.
Unfortunately, Pulisic is the biggest sports marketing dud since Reebok’s “Dan & Dave” campaign for the 1992 Summer Olympics. That could spell serious challenges for Team Pulisic’s ability to attract corporate sponsors before the next World Cup.
As an endorser, Pulisic hauls in an estimated $20 million annually from brands such as Puma, Volkswagen, and Hershey. The problem for him is that after being blamed for Team USA’s humiliating 4-1 loss to Belgium last Monday, the TV spots featuring him kept coming—and coming—all week.
Over the last week, we’ve seen him having a Michelob Ultra with Lionel Messi in one commercial. There were other spots with him dribbling and kicking for Visa and Chobani yogurt. In the most awkward timing of all, Degree deodorant continued to air a commercial in which the 27-year-old talks about creating a “legacy” where admirers say, “This guy changed American soccer.”
Famous last words? As one sports TV producer wrote on X/Twitter: “BAD timing for the Degree commercial where Pulisic says he wants to change American soccer.”
Another potential issue for Pulisic with marketers: He has the skills on the pitch, but he doesn’t have the personality off it. Pulisic doesn’t have the magnetism of other soccer star endorsers such as Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, or David Beckham. It always feels like he’d rather be doing something else—anything else—than speaking to a camera. Even in the Rocky-like Degree commercial that allegedly explores his personal “dream,” he appears passive and uninterested. His line delivery is flat, almost bored.
Four years is a long time. By the time the next World Cup rolls around, Pulisic might still be the most marketable player on the U.S. men’s national team. The criticism of Pulisic from American soccer legends like Carli Lloyd and Landon Donovan has been so brutal that there’s now a backlash to the backlash, especially after it was revealed he suffered a microfracture in his lower right leg against Belgium.
ESPN commentator Craig Burley, for one, doesn’t like how Pulisic is being solely scapegoated for Team USA’s collapse against Belgium. In short, Pulisic could go from an underachieving disappointment to a player that American soccer fans rally around.
“If I was Christian Pulisic I’d be big-time annoyed,” said Burley. “It seems to me it’s almost a personal attack on an individual rather than an analysis of the football that went before. Because if it was analysis of the football, you could (criticize) pretty much the whole team.”
There’s always hope for super-talented athletes. Consider the eventual outcome of Reebok’s infamous “Dan & Dave” campaign. Prior to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the sneaker maker spent $30 million on a month-long ad campaign touting American decathletes Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson. They were supposed to be the next big thing—and vault Reebok past rival Nike in the sneaker wars. But O’Brien stunningly failed to qualify for the Olympics, while Johnson only won a Bronze medal. It was an expensive lesson in advertising hubris. The good news? O’Brien never gave up. Four years later, he won gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
Can Pulisic author a similar comeback story? We’ll see. For now, his stock is low among advertisers, says longtime copywriter Ernest Lupinacci, who wrote ESPN and Nike ad campaigns. These marketers could easily turn to a breakout American star such as Folarin Balogun, who seems more adept at embracing the media/marketing game than Pulisic has.
As Lupinacci told Front Office Sports: “Some men are born great. Some men achieve greatness. And some men have greatness thrust upon them. But, apparently, none of those men are named Christian Pulisic.”
