Mauricio Pochettino hugged the United States men’s national team’s prodigal son as he sauntered off the field, giving Gio Reyna a peck on the cheek and whispering something in his ear.
We will probably never learn what he said, exactly, but we can guess.
Thank you, perhaps. For the goal Reyna scored in the fourth minute, and the quasi-assist he gave in the 71st of the 75 minutes he played in the US’s 2-1 friendly win over Paraguay on Saturday. For extending the USMNT’s unbeaten run to four, after victories over Japan and Australia and a tie with Ecuador.
Thank you, too, for repaying Pochettino’s faith for something akin to a shock call-up, and an even more shocking start. For not making his manager look silly after he called Reyna “a special player” earlier in the week, when Pochettino had to answer uncomfortable questions about breaking his own rule of only selecting players who are fit and in form. After all, Reyna has played just 150 minutes this season at Borussia Mönchengladbach since joining from Borussia Dortmund in search of, well, more minutes. He hadn’t started a game for the US since their elimination from the Copa América on 1 July 2024.
Thank you, certainly, for giving the Americans another attacking weapon. For enabling Sergiño Dest up the right flank and forming a compelling new pairing that provided an offensive pulse when the team was once again badly deprived of manpower – absent forwards Christian Pulisic and Tim Weah, midfielders Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, and defenders Chris Richards and Antonee Robinson. For spotting pockets in the half-spaces, and opening angles and cracks in Paraguay’s low block.
“I’m so happy with him,” Pochettino said of Reyna after the game. “He showed why he started. We can see today that he was great, scored, an [unofficial] assist, and [always had] the capacity to read the game and find the free space in between the lines, I think that was a nightmare for Paraguay and he did a very good job.”
Reyna had his manager’s trust, a feeling that has eluded him for the last few frustrating years. “Play with my instincts, be myself, that’s what the coaches have been telling me the last few days,” he told TNT after the game.
When the loaded moniker of the “golden generation” first started being uttered about this incarnation of the USMNT, it was because of players just like Reyna, the bewitchingly gifted son of Claudio Reyna, a former US captain. Gio was a player possessed of tools and skills that you could dream on. A difference-maker at the very highest level. Potentially, anyway. Good enough to break into a loaded Dortmund side as a teenager, alongside Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham.
Reyna’s international breakthrough was slow in coming, but come it arrived in that scintillating performance at the 2024 Concacaf Nations League Finals, when he was the player of the tournament as he led the US to a third straight title. There was something magical about Reyna in those two games, taking control of the extra-time win over Jamaica and the comprehensive victory over Mexico.
His first appearance under Pochettino came in that same tournament a year later, when the apathetic US caved in on themselves. Reyna, like several teammates, looked entirely disposable. Saturday marked his first appearance since then, and only his second game in the 13th month of the Pochettino era.
Reyna is perhaps the program’s most talented player, and certainly its most befuddling prospect, vacillating between effervescent performances, injury layoffs, an icky scandal, and long stretches out of favor for both club and country. He commands the spotlight, or he is booed off the stage; it’s never anything in between.
But when he’s on, as he was on Saturday, there is nobody in the player pool like him. “Boy, it’s fun to play with him,” said goalkeeper Matt Freese. “You just get him the ball and things will happen.”
His goal was telling. He’s fairly tall, he noted casually, and he’d been working on headers in practice in the last few weeks with Gladbach. He summarily scored his first header as a professional, two days after his 23rd birthday – “A little gift to myself, ” he said. It was also ammunition for the family group chat. The goal, Gio Reyna’s ninth for the US, pushed him past his father’s eight – a fact that Gio said he didn’t know until arriving back in the locker room, after which he texted his dad some light-hearted banter.
The second goal was more of a retrograde Reyna item. Diego Luna and Cristian Roldan harried Paraguay into a turnover which rolled to striker Folarin Balogun. He played Reyna through the line, who returned the ball into Balogun’s path. It took a deflection – robbing Reyna of the assist – but fell for the striker, who scored for a third time in four matches.
Reyna mostly combined with Sergiño Dest up the right flank, however, speaking of mercurial players who have had scarce opportunities under Pochettino, mostly owing to injury. The Dutch-American deployed in the wing-back role in Pochettino’s newish 3-4-3 system, was making only his third US appearance since 2023.
You would not conventionally call this a standout game for Dest. He lost the ball a few times. His defending wasn’t noteworthy, since, well, that isn’t a thing he’s particularly good at. Yet he added something intangible. A bonus threat going forward. A bit of flair and pizzazz. A dash of chaos. The eccentric PSV player is as liable to cut inside and score a stonking goal with untied shoelaces on his bad foot – as he nearly did in the second half when his stinging shot was touched just over the bar, albeit with properly affixed cleats – as he is to lose his cool and get a red card. He is probably the team’s most creative player, an ambulatory tekkers reel. He’s certainly the most fun.
More germanely, he creates overloads with his versatility. “He can play in so many different positions,” said midfielder Brenden Aaronson. “He can be really technical in the pocket. He’s not only a right-back or a right wing-back. He can play in that central role. He’s an amazing player. He offers something completely different from many other players.”
Pochettino has been preaching culture and competitiveness and a kind of truculent attitude to anything the team does on the field. But if the Americans are to get anywhere at the World Cup next summer, they will need their best players’ individual gifts to shine through. That’s how the biggest games are won, after all, in the fine flashes when inspiration overcomes difficulty. In those little moments, they will need their Dests and their Reynas.
Late on in Saturday’s game, the TNT feed panned to Reyna chatting with Balogun on the bench. Their work had been done, their point proven. Reyna tried to look cool, nonchalant, as if it had just been another night. But he couldn’t help himself. A smile formed on his lips, the sort of smile that says you may have just forced things in your favor at last.
Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out in the spring of 2026. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.
