'Coaching is something I love': Christian Pulisic's father follows his passion

After playing a key role in his son’s rapid ascent, the father of American soccer’s would-be savior has resumed a deferred passion

Blending into the background doesn’t seem to bother Mark Pulisic one bit. It was true last year while tucked away on the southern shores of Lake Ontario in Rochester, upstate New York. And it’s equally the case this year further south on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Where it counts most, Mark has been the ultimate background figure for some time: as father to 19-year-old US soccer phenom and Borussia Dortmund attacker Christian Pulisic. Omnipresent as his young teen navigated the brisk transition from ordinary schoolboy to an entire country’s next great hope of world-classdom, in this theater he was simply: Mark, Christian Pulisic’s dad-cum-youth coach.

The family name has cache these days. There to be exploited. “I could have already cashed in on his name,” comes the terse response to the mere notion. Pulisic senior is speaking from his current home base with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, down in the United Soccer League, US soccer’s second tier, where he’s an assistant. “That’s not what I’m about. That’s not in my fiber or my belief.”

Now ensconced back home after a quiet, unheralded return stateside a year ago, Mark Pulisic is in no mood for pretense. He’d been in Germany primarily as a parent. But he’s nevertheless a man determined to succeed on his own merits, more than a regent with a coaching badge. Or as put by Jochen Graf, the Tampa Bay Rowdies striker who was there in Rochester last year as Mark slipped back into the United States and his old career, almost unnoticed: “He’s not just all about his son. He doesn’t even want to be known as, ‘Oh, this is just Christian Pulisic’s father.’”

Mark is a minted professional in his own right, the Pulisic name first forged in the early 1990s wasteland of US soccer as Mark turned pro in the popular indoor game of the time – first as a player, then as an aspirant young coach. Soccer had been a given for the New York native as the son of a Hajduk Split-supporting man from a small island in Croatia. Mark had even retraced his father’s footsteps to the former Yugoslavia, then at war, in pursuit of his soccer dream only to be chased home amid the din of military choppers and fighter jets overhead. So he carved out a successful career with the Harrisburg Heat as a prolific penalty box poacher, with a coaching inclination quickly following. He earned his coaching licenses, putting them to work at a low-level college while still a player.

Years later, a child prodigy on his hands, his own ambitions took a backseat. By the start of 2017, as Christian came of age in Dortmund, where Mark had been living as dutiful dad for his boy’s first two and a half years with the Bundesliga giants, the Pulisic family decided the time had come for the now young man to fly solo.

So Mark would be able to return under his own weight to the pro game he’d parked some years before. That he did – though far off the radar of soccer’s chattering classes. To the surprise of some who thought he might reach higher, he quietly took an assistant coach’s role in the USL with the Rochester Rhinos. A year on, he remains down there with the Riverhounds. Still an assistant, still in the background, still seemingly content to occupy that space.

“I wanted to get back into coaching, 100%,” says the 49-year-old. “I knew that once Christian was ready to be there [in Germany] alone that I would have the opportunity to get back into coaching, something I love. In any capacity.”

That apparently low bar he set himself might be slightly misleading. Bob Lilley, Mark’s boss in Pittsburgh and prior in Rochester, remembers when the Pulisic family returned from a short period living in England a little over 10 years ago. They’d been there at the behest of Mark’s wife, Kelley, as she pursued a teaching opportunity. On their return, explains Lilley, Mark laid down an almost instant marker of his capabilities. “When they came back he took a job in Detroit with an indoor team and he won immediately. Because he had ideas.” That included a coach of the year gong. Lilley speaks as someone who’s known Mark for 32 years, since their days together playing on the same college team. They’re close friends. Then again, Lilley himself boasts a concerted record of success as a head coach at the sub-MLS level.

Ask Mark what his coaching ceiling might be, and he hedges. “Right now, I’m happy being an assistant because I have a little more time to follow other things, things I love, and my whole mindset isn’t going to be engulfed in a team, although I put a lot of time in,” he says. “Maybe a year or two down the road I’ll want my own team and I’ll want to head on to a head coach role, but like I said right now it’s nothing I think about. I’m just enjoying my role in Pittsburgh.”

Within that list of passions remains his son. Mark thinks a lot about what it takes to produce a player like the one Christian is fast becoming. Some of that was planted during the family’s stint in England. It’s well documented how this wove into a seven-year-old Christian a deep sense of the game as a way of life. The immersive soccer culture also impacted Mark. He spent time on a coaching license course at England’s vaunted Lilleshall. He also trawled stadiums and training pitches, particularly around London, absorbing a place where a football could be a ubiquitous accoutrement for British kids.

Mark took his experiences with him to the youth coaching role he inhabited at the academy in Pennsylvania where Christian developed prior to signing with Dortmund. His ideas were reinforced in Germany where he coached in Dortmund’s academy system. He sees the deficits at home, but, back in the pro game, there is another picture. “US soccer right now is in a lot of trouble,” Mark says. “MLS is difficult to break into. I don’t want to fight those battles I don’t feel I can win.”

Still, after Lilley left his head coach role in Rochester and took the reins in Pittsburgh, he wasn’t certain his preferred number two would be beside him on the touchline come the beginning of the season. “I just feel fortunate to have him,” Lilley says. “Even this year, I was waiting a long time because he wanted to explore other opportunities first before he made a final decision.” The pair put together a Rochester team that made a play-off run last year. It’s very early days this year, but so far they’ve improved the lot of a previously struggling Pittsburgh. Lilley describes Mark’s role as key, someone who helps him avoid tunnel vision and who pushes back hard.

“I’ve played for a lot of head coaches who are commanders, and assistant trainers can tend to get lost in that mix,” says Graf of life under the duo last year. “And they turn into yes men. You know, right when that happens, that that assistant doesn’t get the respect from the players. Mark’s not that guy. He’s not afraid to tell Bob or anybody else what he thinks or feels – and that’s important.” There was an absence of pretense, recalls a mirthful Graf: except, perhaps, his new Nike numbers to replace the set of Puma shoes worn out pounding the training pitches in Dortmund.

The abiding image of a no-nonsense, lighthearted meritocrat emerges. He wanted his son to earn his reputation based on what he put ins, what he shows. “And that’s what I want for myself,” Mark says. “I’m not going to use anything other than what I’m comfortable using and what my strengths are. I’m not going to go put myself in a position where I don’t think I’m good enough – or comfortable – because of my name.”

So no mad notions of emerging from the shadows for a gig in Europe, then?

“Unless Dortmund hires me, no,” he says, with a hearty laugh. “Because you know what, I’d love to coach my son again.”