There are stories which do not go the way you think they should. You see them moving in a certain direction, toward a certain end–the untapped promise, the legendary story. The child who had it all ended up with nothing to show what had happened–when something changes. Quietly. With no press release or redemption arc to be taken home. And you realise that you were reading the wrong story after all.
Four years down the line, Gio Reyna has been doing so to people. That he will be playing in a home World Cup this summer, and that his coach has taken to publicly referring to him as amazing and that he believes in him. And he does, it is one of those more quietly pleasing products that American soccer has brought about in a long time. Not that it seemed to be so. Since there was a stretch between, when it was really difficult to believe that he was going to get it.
That Which No One Likes to See
You cannot reach out to the final 18 months without initially going back to Qatar. No need to rush back to the bones of it now – Reyna himself is almost visibly wearying every time a microphone is thrust his way, and somebody wants to know about 2022. But the essence of where he was and where he is is the entirety of it all. This moment is not weighted, as without that low.
He was a 20-year-old. One of the youngest and most exciting players that Dortmund had ever seen. Generally regarded as the most naturally endowed creative talent which American soccer had ever produced in a generation. The World Cup was to be his coming-out party. Rather, there were reports of not working hard before the opening match with Wales, a performance in the warm-up scrimmage that annoyed his teammates. The coaching staff took hours to decide whether or not to send him home. He was on for 52 minutes in the entire tournament. Then the actual harm started to occur – the family backlash, the investigation, the months of headlines which had little to do with football. Everything was to do with two families with years of shared history ripping bits off one another in front of everyone.
Reyna gave his own side of the story simply. He was informed that his role would be very minimal; he did not like it, and he demonstrated it negatively and at the wrong time. And no difficult thing when you sit and read that explanation. A young man of 20, who felt he was overworked, and took it ill, and paid with the cost of years. It was an erroneous behaviour. It was not such a puzzle as to the human emotion behind it.
The Slow Fade
What followed was the more perilous type of troublesome; no sharp downfall but a gradual, gradual declining. There was an application for a loan to Nottingham Forest, and in his ten non-goal appearances no real trace of him. He returned to Dortmund, and he hardly played. They gave him his number seven shirt to Jobe Bellingham and marched off last summer when he was at last leaving.
The transfer to Borussia Mönchengladbach was touted as a new beginning. It was more like a last roll of the dice as it appeared outside. A three-year contract, a reunion with his best friend and USMNT teammate Joe Scally. He believed that somewhere under the scars and the bangs and the years of bench playouts, the player that the world had at times glimpsed was still inside. Things began on a bad note. The team struggled. Reyna was getting a grip on his feet. But the one thing it had so long lacked was actually occurring, he was playing. Week after week. In place and on the field. And something was beginning to happen to that everyday, common sense steadiness, somewhere.
He played over 127 minutes of Bundesliga before December, as compared to the whole of the previous season at Dortmund. He had now played three games in succession, and this is not much till you realise that he had been unable to make three successive starts in years.
Two Games. It Took All One Minute
It is the time of November with the international window, and Pochettino seems to have made up his mind. Four minutes later, against Paraguay, Reyna was at the back post and received a cross in his head, which he saw fall in. Since March 2024, it was his first international goal. He was on the field 75 minutes and was, the first time in a long time, his own self over, easy, dangerous, in the here and now. And a helping hand in a 5-1 win against Uruguay a few days later. Two games. Pochettino had had his fill.
He included him in the World Cup team, termed him as an incredible talent, claimed that he adds things that the rest of the team could not add, and then said, -vow, unqualified, plain and simply- I really trust in him. The last thing you want to hear is that after many years of being viewed as a challenge to handle and not as a player to develop.
It was when sitting in a car park beside his wife that Reyna learned he had made it, and the two of them were waiting there. Just two of them, as the likelihood of getting the call in either direction was equal. His family waited anxiously and hopefully. He explained that when he informed them, they were only a little bit above the moon.
As reporters have a habit of doing, when they mentioned Qatar, he replied that much had changed. He was married now. He had a dog. He had grown up. All he attempted to do was to explain it in that and no more, and engaged in no form of public atonement. He merely replied that he was now different and left it at that.
Home soil. Belief in him by a coach. After everything. That will have no bad end.
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