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No Pulisic in Magdeburg?

The goal of today's post is to answer the following question: Why did Christian Pulisic not even travel with the team to Magdeburg for the DFB Pokal match on Tuesday? Was Bosz pissed at him? Did he "not make the cut," as one source I consulted said? Or was it something more benign and obvious, like Bosz wanting to save him for more important Bundesliga and Champions League games?

I must've searched "pulisic Magdeburg" 40 times on Google yesterday, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. One source said that Weigl, Götze, and Pulisic, "didn't make the cut," which seemed downright blasphemous considering these three players' abilities. Another source said, more plausibly, that they had been "spared" by Bosz, which is of course a bit vague. Spared what? Spared the hassle of traveling with the team? Spared the hassle of beating down a third league team? Spared the wear and tear on the body?

And so I kept searching, while my mind ran wild and conjured all different sorts of possibilities. I imagined some kind of argument between Weigl and Pulisic and Bosz, possibly about tactics or the rotations that have been happening, and Bosz punishing them because of it. I imagined the other scenario, the one about them straight "not making the cut," and frankly this possibly confounded and outraged me. Could Bosz really be so dense? And then I imagined a better case scenario, Bosz sitting down with Julian and Christian and saying the following: "Guys, we have some really really important games coming up. We HAVE to beat Hannover on Saturday, and we HAVE to beat Apoel Nicosia in the Champions League. And then we play Bayern. I need you guys fresh. I know you might not like it, but I want you to stay here and rest. I'm sorry if you disagree with this decision, but my mind's made up."

Who knows if a conversation like this took place. Maybe not. But I like to think it did.

In my desperation I turned to the Twitter pundits with this post:

No response. Then, this morning I finally found something. Stefan Buczko, who covers Borussia Dortmund for ESPN, tweeted,
"Bosz to Sky: 'Mario Gotze is getting a rest Christian Pulisic, Aubameyang and Julian Weigl have picked up slight knocks.' So this, apparently, is a quote from Bosz to Sky. I couldn't, despite some scouring, find this original source, but there it is: Pulisic didn't "not make the cut," and there is probably not a tryst. He's just a bit battered and getting some much-needed rest.

I'd love to learn more, and if you know anything at all please leave it in the comments. Hopefully we'll see more of our boi this Saturday against Hannover 96.

Bis bald!
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