Christian Pulisic is not the first Captain America to play in Serie A. Michael Bradley earned the same nickname when he joined Chievo in 2011 and set to stealing scenes with heroic last-gasp interventions. It stuck when he moved on to Roma, where teammates borrowed an airplane captain’s hat to crown him after a winning goal against Udinese. Never mind that one commentator thought the midfielder looked more like Lex Luthor.
Bradley was the fourth American ever to play in the Italian top flight, and only the second since the end of the second world war. The fifth was Weston McKennie, who joined Juventus in 2020. Oguchi Onyewu signed for Milan, but never made a league appearance – his time there remembered instead for a training ground brawl with Zlatan Ibrahimović.
