Christian Pulisic renews contract with Borussia Dortmund, which is absolutely the right (non-)move for him

After many months of speculation that Liverpool and other big European clubs were in pursuit of Borussia Dortmund’s American wunderkind Christian Pulisic, the 18-year-old attacking midfielder from Pennsylvania has inked a new contract with his German club through the 2019-2020 season. The new pact could ensure that the United States men’s national team standout stays with his only professional club for at least 3½ more seasons.

The club made the announcement on Monday morning.

The new contract runs out June 30, 2020, a few months before his 22nd birthday. “We’re very happy to have another very talented player,” Dortmund Sporting Director Michael Zorc said in a statement. “Christian already has an important place in our team and he can be a pillar of our sporting future.”

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Pulisic, who won’t turn 19 until September, joined Dortmund as a 16-year-old free agent out of high school almost two years ago. He has since made a meteoric rise through European club soccer – the likes of which no American has ever experienced.

“I still have a lot to learn,” Pulisic said in the statement. “Here in Dortmund I have the best conditions. And here I have the chance to play in front of 80,000 fans. We have the best fans in the world – they couldn’t be better!”

In the 2016 calendar year, Pulisic made 30 appearances for Dortmund, including five starts in the Champions League, and in the process, became the youngest foreigner to score a goal in the Bundesliga – he would get four in all – and the youngest player of any nationality to get a second goal there. He also became the youngest American of the modern era to score for the USA, the youngest ever to start and score in a World Cup Qualifier and the youngest ever to score two goals in one game for the U.S.

Unsurprisingly, interest in him quickly materialized from other European clubs. Liverpool, managed by Jurgen Klopp, under whose Dortmund reign Pulisic was signed, seemed the most eager. But several offers north of $10 million were apparently rejected.

As Dortmund tries to rebuild what had become a European powerhouse under Klopp with Thomas Tuchel now in charge, Pulisic is seen as a key piece. And it would make no sense at all for him to leave.

He gets to play regularly for a club where he’s comfortable and that doesn’t hesitate to lean heavily on young players, even when the going gets tough. He has a coach in Tuchel whose faith in him is abiding. He’s in the Bundesliga, which at the very least is the third-best league in the world, and he’s seeing Champions League or Europa League action every season. There probably isn’t a better place for him to develop right now, especially when you consider the frequency with which mega-prospects like him go under in a bottomless depth chart when they leave for huge clubs.

That isn’t to say that Pulisic is guaranteed to stay in Dortmund until 2020. Soccer contracts are seemingly drawn up just so they can be ripped up. Sometimes, all a contract renewal really amounts to is a quick raise and signing bonus for the player and leverage to extract a bigger transfer fee from suitors for the club. That hardly seems to be the case here, though.

Pulisic may well leave a few years down the line. But this contract has multiplied the likelihood that he’ll stay for the short and medium term. For him, the U.S. national team and indeed Dortmund, this is the best possible outcome.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.