How teen sensation Pulisic rescued Dortmund against Real Madrid

Jurgen Klinsmann doesn’t have a lot of time for baseball. The head coach of the U.S. national team lamented the "stop-and-go" nature of America’s Pastime during an interview with the Wall Street Journal this summer, arguing that the endless pausing of the action to communicate messages between the diamond and the dugout stopped players from ever learning to think for themselves.

"We still have a culture here where people wait for someone else to solve your problem," said Klinsmann. "This comes from a reactive culture in other sports, where decisions are driven from the outside."

How fascinating it would be to get a take on those words from Christian Pulisic. Borussia Dortmund’s 18-year-old American winger did not look like a man awaiting instruction as he stepped off the bench at the Westfalenstadion and immediately set about running at Real Madrid’s defenders. What he did look like, on this particular evening, was soccer’s equivalent to a baseball team’s closer.

Where a relief pitcher might emerge from the bullpen to replace a starter with a tired arm, here Pulisic hopped off the bench to give Ousmane Dembele's heavy legs a rest. The Frenchman had been electric in the first-half, terrorising Madrid as he cut in relentlessly from the right flank. If his finishing had matched the standard of his dribbling, he might have scored a hatful.

Related: 3 takeaways from Tuesday's Champions League action

Instead, Dembele came off in the 73rd minute without a goal or an assist to his name. But to accuse him of contributing nothing to his team’s chances of getting a result from this game would be misguided. Dortmund was losing 2-1 when he came off, but Dembele's hard running had left Madrid’s left-back, Danilo, exhausted.

Now it was up to Pulisic to exploit such manufactured frailty.

The American understood the situation perfectly. Within moments of entering the game, he was on the ball and tearing past Danilo, fizzing a low centre in from the right only to see Keylor Navas push it out of harm’s way.

No matter. Pulisic had identified his opponent’s weakness now, as an effective closer should. In the 87th minute he carved in from a deep position on the right touchline, accelerating at the perfect moment to evade Danilo’s lunge and leave his opponent seated on turf. Pulisic advanced to the edge of the box, drawing two more opponents before floating a cross towards Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Madrid’s Dani Carvajal intervened, leaping between the ball and its intended target, but only succeeded in diverting it into the path of another Dortmund player, Andre Schurrle. He wasted no time converting his opportunity into an equalising goal.

The game finished 2-2, a result that might yet prove vital for both sides in what is shaping up to be an extremely competitive Champions League group. Madrid barely scraped to a win at home against Sporting Lisbon in its opening fixture - having trailed as late as the 89th minute. It certainly would have been damaging for Dortmund not to take anything from its first game at home.

This, though, was also simply a compelling game in its own right. At times during a breakneck start it seemed as though Madrid might get swept away by the running of Aubameyang and Dembele, but instead the Spaniards took the lead through Cristiano Ronaldo and would have led at the interval were it not for Keylor Navas’ bizarre and calamitous decision to punch clear a Raphael Guerreiro free-kick.

The ball had flown straight at the Madrid keeper, and looked as though it could easily have been caught, but instead it pinged off his fists and into the head of Raphael Varane. It was bouncing back in for an own goal, but Aubameyang rushed in and jabbed it across the line to be sure.

In the second half, Madrid gradually came to exert a greater control. When Varane restored the lead in the 68th minute, it seemed unlikely that Dortmund would be able to respond. But the introductions of Pulisic and Emre Mor - an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old - off the bench turned the tide back in the Germans’ favour.

You might say that manager Thomas Tuchel had inverted the baseball model - in which the role of closer is most often played by an older veteran who might rely on their experience more than their athleticism to seal the deal. Or perhaps I’ve simply pushed this analogy too far.

Either way, perhaps someone should tell Klinsmann to stop worrying so much about young American soccer players’ capacity to break free of their nation’s sporting heritage.

Christian Pulisic, the Pennsylvania teenager who just turned a Champions League tie against Madrid on its head, seems to be doing just fine.