Pulisic willing to forgo summer holiday to start Chelsea preseason on time — report

The new Premier League gets under way in a little over 7 weeks, which means that Chelsea are set to begin preseasons preparations in a little over 2-3 weeks (either the week of July 1 or the week of July 8, as evidenced by last summer), with the first preseason game coming up in less than a month in Japan (July 19), but for some players, all that will come a bit too early.

The situation is not as dire as last summer, when the World Cup tied up some of our best players well into preseason, but new signing Christian Pulisic will probably still be involved at the CONCACAF Gold Cup through early July, especially if, as expected, the USA make it to the final, which is set to take place Sunday, July 7.

However, according to the Evening Standard, the 20-year-old is willing to sacrifice a summer holiday so he can be better prepared for his debut season at Stamford Bridge.

In fairness, Pulisic already had a break before the Gold Cup, taking time off after the Bundesliga season ended in mid-May, stopping by Cobham for a minute, but then not joining up with the USA national team until earlier this week (skipping all the warm-up friendlies and most of the training). That’s a solid four weeks at least of football vacation, which should be enough to energize him not only for the tournament but for the season ahead.

Still, the attitude is commendable as he could certainly be entitled to taking another couple weeks off after the Gold Cup — a standard practice — if he wanted to. Hopefully, that sort of mentality, and the extra hard work, will prove useful as he attempts to lessen the impact of Eden Hazard’s departure at Chelsea.