Why U.S. men's national team is wisely rushing to play a 17-year-old

Next week, the United States men's national team might very well be handing a debut to a 17-year-old.

A 17-year-old who won't legally become an adult until Sept. 18.

If Christian Pulisic does indeed make his first U.S. appearance in Tuesday's World Cup qualifier against Guatemala in Columbus, Ohio, he'll be 17 and 193 days old. When Freddy Adu – remember him? – played his first game for the U.S. on Jan. 22, 2006, he was 16 years and 234 days old, a record that still stands.

Which is all to say that such a maiden run-out would be remarkable.

Also, wise.

You can trifle about the Hershey, Penn.-born Croatian-American's qualifications to be on the national team. On the one hand, the midfielder was most recently an Under-17 national teamer, scoring an enormous 20 goals in 34 appearances. He has never played for the Under-23 national team, or even the Under-20s. If the point of the national team pyramid is to gradually bring players along, Pulisic is basically skipping two grades and jumping right to his senior thesis – a World Cup qualifier.

On the other hand, he has already made six appearances for Thomas Tuchel's reborn Borussia Dortmund team this year – four in the Bundesliga and two in the Europa League. That's nothing to sniff at. There are plenty of long-serving U.S. national teamers whose careers never came close to reaching those heights.

Plainly, Pulisic is special.

And this is where we once again tread on the slippery slope that has sent us shuttling down into the depths so many times before. The overhyping of young American prospects is systemic and toxic.

But then there's the other precedent to consider: the ones that got away.

The name Giuseppe Rossi still makes a lot of U.S. fans' blood boil. He was born and raised in New Jersey but declined a national team call-up in 2006 and has played for Italy since. The disappointment has been mitigated somewhat by Rossi's career being derailed by injuries in recent years, but the sting of one of the world's most promising young strikers – at the time – ditching the U.S. remains. There was little to be done, though. He simply preferred to play for Italy.

That wasn't the case with Neven Subotic, who was cut from the Under-20 U.S. national team, became a star defender at Dortmund, and wound up playing for Serbia instead. Under-20 head coach Thomas Rongen misjudged Subotic's upside, getting one of a hundred such projections wrong. And thus the U.S. lost out. That, too, can happen.

But in the Jurgen Klinsmann era, there has been a concerted campaign to pull the most promising young players into the program early and get them cap-tied. If they make a single appearance for the U.S. in an official game – like a World Cup qualifier, say, or anything that isn't a friendly or a tournament unsanctioned by FIFA – they can no longer appear for any other country.

In late 2013, winger Julian Green was making waves in Bayern Munich's youth academy, and even though he had an American father, he had represented the Germany youth national teams at four different age levels. He would have to make a one-time switch to be eligible for the U.S. – meaning he could never represent another country. After much wrangling, he filed for the switch in 2014 and made his USMNT debut in April.

Green injured his shoulder in that game against Mexico. Despite still being hurt and, as it turned out, unavailable for the first three games at the World Cup, Klinsmann nevertheless brought the 18-year-old to Brazil. Speculation persists that Klinsmann convinced Green to join the U.S. in exchange for a guaranteed spot on the World Cup roster, but that's always been denied.

Although Green scored a consolation goal in extra time of a round-of-16 defeat against Belgium, wherein the Americans were eliminated, he hasn't been of much use to the program, as his club career has stalled. He's currently on the Under-23 national team trying to qualify for the Olympics. But if he does come good, he's committed to the U.S.

After Green, the next big Next Big Thing was Gedion Zelalem, the German-born Ethiopian-American whose father would have to acquire U.S. citizenship before his son could. That was eventually arranged as well, and the 19-year-old Arsenal prospect, currently on loan with Glasgow Rangers, has represented the U.S. at Under-20 and Under-23 levels.

As such, cap-tying Pulisic fits into a larger policy that has taken hold under Klinsmann. Although he has represented the U.S. before – at the Under-15 and Under-17 levels – Pulisic now also has a Croatian passport and has become a great deal more visible. And the only way to ensure that he won't defect is to get him on the field in an official game.

You might argue that he will have gotten onto the field on his own merits, since he has broken into one of Europe's best teams. But U.S. Soccer is also playing a long game. And if he makes a cameo on Tuesday, the payoff could come in the long term more so than immediately.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.