Is Christian Pulisic better than Messi? Check the stats and numbers

Christian Pulisic, Gold Cup champion with his national team and Champions League champion with Chelsea, became the first American to win the Champions League on the pitch.The attacking midfielder was crowned by defeating Manchester City in the Final of the tournament, then contributed his soccer to a new Gold Cup for the USMMT.

However, American Jovan Kirovski also won the Champions League with Borussia Dortmund in the 1997 edition, but he is far from the protagonist Pulisic has been with the Blues, as his compatriot only played 27 minutes in two games of the group stage of that tournament, so he did not even appear in the Final.  

Pulisic had to patiently save his chance, as Tomas Tuchel sent him to the substitutes' bench at the start of the match, but it was not until the second half when Christian Pulisic came on for Timo Werner. 

The record shared by Christian Pulisic and Messi

Chelsea's Christian Pulisic can boast that he caught up with Lionel Messi in one statistic after their UEFA Champions League quarterfinal second leg against Porto: the highest number of fouls in a match.

Christian Pulisic became the second player with 11 fouls received during a Champions League match, a record that before Tuesday belonged only to Barcelona's Argentine star.

Lionel Messi, in the 2011 semifinals against Real Madrid, in the second leg, spent the match driving Real Madrid players 'crazy' who, as happened to Pulisic, chose the hardness and to stop the bloodletting that the Argentine player was causing, getting to undertake 11 fouls. Messi earned this peculiar record in 2011 when Barcelona eliminated Real Madrid in the Semifinals. 

The American, like the Argentine, suffered up to eleven of the 20 fouls made by the Portuguese side, so he received 55%,which shows what a pain in the ass he was for the opposing defense. In the 'blue' squad itself, no player had received so many fouls in a match since 2015, when Eden Hazard also suffered eleven against Stoke City.
 

Lionel Messi was crowned champion of America with the Argentina national team and accumulates 6 golden balls and in total has 36 titles throughout his career. Pulisic is far from these achievements but he is on the right track, the achievements of the American with his national team and Chelsea position him as one of the players with projection for the coming years.