"I want to score a goal to help this team win. That's really it." Four words to bury four years of noise — and Gio Reyna said them like he meant every one.
The 23-year-old heads into the 2026 World Cup as one of the more polarising names in Mauricio Pochettino's squad. Not because of his ability — that was never the question — but because of the saga that followed him out of Qatar in 2022, when it emerged he'd nearly been sent home by then-coach Gregg Berhalter over his attitude in training. What followed was a genuinely strange spiral: Reyna's mother, former US women's international Danielle, reported a 1991 physical altercation between Berhalter and his then-girlfriend (now wife) to US Soccer. Berhalter was cleared. The whole thing became a footnote that somehow refuses to stay in the footnotes.
Older, more experienced — but how sharp?
Reyna's argument for moving on is straightforward: the entire squad is four years older. The US fielded the second-youngest roster at the 2022 World Cup, and it showed in the moments that mattered. "These little details will help us in the long run," he said. That's fair. Experience compounds in tournament football.
The trickier question is his form. Reyna has made just eight Bundesliga appearances for Borussia Moenchengladbach since January — all as a substitute. That's not a springboard into a major tournament. Pochettino clearly believes in the player anyway, and technically Reyna remains one of the most gifted attacking options available to the USMNT. But there's a difference between potential and match sharpness, and right now the gap between those two things is real.
The US open Group D against Paraguay on Friday, with Australia and Turkey also waiting. Anyone pricing up the Americans' chances of progressing deep into a tournament they're co-hosting should weigh Reyna's upside against a player who hasn't started a league game in months. If Pochettino can get him firing, the ceiling is high. If not, the squad depth will be tested early.
"Last World Cup, maybe we were all just a little bit young," Reyna said. The 2026 version has no such excuse waiting in reserve.
