More than a month after completing the most high-profile winter club move among Americans, Bryan Reynolds finally took the field for AS Roma for the first time.
The former FC Dallas right back made his Roma debut on Sunday, coming off the bench for a 30-minute appearance in Roma’s 2-0 loss to Parma.
Reynolds completed nine of 11 passes in a relatively quiet performance for Roma, which was already trailing 2-0 when Reynolds entered the match.
Reynolds joined Roma in a deal that is an initial loan deal with an obligation to buy Reynolds in the summer for a fee sources confirmed to SBI is worth $8.5 million.
Reynolds’ Roma debut had been delayed by a variety of factors, but he rejoined the Serie A club in recent weeks and played his way into the playing rotation, first making the Roma bench for a March 7 Serie A match against Genoa.
The 19-year-old American’s debut finally came on Sunday, becoming just the fifth U.S. Men’s National Team pool player to play in Serie A, joining current Juventus midfielder and fellow FC Dallas academy product Weston McKennie.
Roma returns to action on Saturday against Napoli.
guy’s playing his first game after a long offseason, coming in as a sub, integrating with a high level team, and you’re getting cold feet already? cut him some slack. fwiw some of the snobbery is amusing considering his FCD teammate plays in portugal and some of the fan favorites have had some nightmares eg Robinson vs Chelsea or Dest in UCL. or forgotten man chris richards in hoffenheim. far as I am concerned throw a hat over all of them and whoever plays best for the US gets the job. as i pointed out on musah it’s getting to the place where everyone has a resume and that cancels out and more attention should be paid to performance, and over a longer term as opposed to “how did he look this week.” talent is talent, quit paying so close attention to the roller coaster position each week.
Kind of looked like a guy who hadn’t played a match in 4 months who was playing a position he’s not accustomed to, with teammates who don’t trust him yet.
Yup- but good to get that one out of the way in the context of some minutes with not much at risk. That he was inserted at least speaks to him making positive impressions with his work in training. Progress for Reynolds. And… a 19 year old getting some minutes for Roma not being a huge headline indicates progress for US soccer.
It also indicates a disproportionate level of excitement one way or the other depending on who the player is. I’ve seen (or saw in this past tense case) more articles and words written about Jordan Morris’ loan move to a English Championship side than were written about Hoppe’s Bundesliga hat trick, Chris Richards’ Bayern move and subsequent VERY successful loan thus far, Reggie Cannon’s interesting first season in Portugal in a survival from relegation battle, Tim Weah’s role as an impact substitute for Lille, Sergino Dest’s rollercoaster season for some little old club called Barcelona, or Daryl Dike’s immediate impactful play during his own loan spell. None of this has much to do with the players or what they’re doing or not doing imho, but is rather an indication that certain players – for whatever reason – get a lot of press and a lot of run with certain journalists than others do. I guess in a way it’s natural, as we do have a lot of up and coming players now and they can’t ALL be covered, but it would be nice if the same so-called US Soccer journalists would put as much investment of their time and interest into some of the aforementioned players as they did when they covered Walker Zimmerman’s journey in MLS, Aaron Long’s speculative moves abroad, or Wil Trapp’s leadership chops. I’ll go ahead and say it – and I absolutely omit this site from my opinion because I think Ives and his team do an amazing job – but I think that by and large the US soccer media has a certain player profile they gravitate toward, the cookie cutter images of a Stu Holden, Landon Donovan, Jordan Morris, Wil Trapp, Paul Arriola, and Christian Pulisic, that they see as either more American or (probably more the case) more relatable to their reader base, which they sort of project to be white and suburban. Again, this is entirely an observation about the journalists and the coverage, not about the players themselves. It’s a pattern and trend that I think is there, and maybe there are a ton of reasons for it that I can’t see, but the common threads are a bit black and white, to put a fine point on it.
Gabe, the attention paid to Freddy Adu, Gedion Zalelem, Yedlin, Marvel Wynn at one time or another, some of the Germericans and even Gio Reyna sort of undermine your argument. I think also at play is that defensive players tend to never get the press that attackers get (barring Alexi Lalas). Sargent scoring goals will get more coverage than any defender helping get a clean sheet.
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I think it is also true that journalists tend to play to their audience. It is also almost certainly true that cute little blond girls get more sympathetic coverage than do young black or hispanic boys when they are victims of some tragic event. It is not just soccer coverage that has this disparity.
reyna is actually already productive for dortmund. adu or zelalem is unfair and unfounded. dortmund didn’t loan him out or get disappointed. to the contrary, we oddly chose to play a primarily central player in some weird pinched in wing role where he looked awkward. and he still had a US assist. the fix is easy. play him as a 10 and swap out musah where he belongs wide as well.
the club form stuff has gone too far when you’re drawing or even considering “bust” conclusions from one game. i’d be drawing the opposite conclusion, they like him enough to put in a game on loan and we’ll see what the balance of the season holds.
I’m not sure Gabe, I did an internet search for articles on Dike, Zim, Aaron Long, and Wil Trapp. Dike had articles from national organizations like SI, NBC Sports, as well as soccer specific sites. The guys you mentioned getting all the coverage just local articles from Nashville and Minneapolis and MLS, who still highlights Dike and had an article on Reynolds today. The hottest US Soccer players right now are Wes, Tyler, and Pulisic so I’m not sure the bias in the media is as obvious as you see it. Dike has been the most reported on player on SBI over the last month, Dest was highlighted at least once a week in the fall when he made his Barca debut. There is not a lot of budget in US Soccer media so they depend on local media to pump out material then translate it and quote it for their own piece. The Bundesliga clubs do a great job of getting stuff out on their Americans to drive their brand I’m not sure Serie A is quite there. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see more articles on Reynolds in the next few days as the Italian media catches up. I think with the slowness of his transfer and the drawn out process just to get into the country and get virus clearance caused people to kind of forget about him given how quickly Dike, Aaronson, and McKenzie jumped right into lineups. Racism is an important issue I’m just not sure it’s the problem here.
dike, aaronson, and mckenzie’s choices were, shall we say, less ambitious. i have actually promoted such calibrated career choices only to be knocked by the club snobs who think only the big clubs are serious. guy then makes the big ambitious choice y’all want and you nitpick him for playing nervous his first game. which has been part of why i have encouraged dialing the ambition just right — is the bigger teams are hothouses. harder to make the field, more scrutinized by the fans and media. pulisic is up one minute, down the next, in some opinions. to me while you can get a knock talent remains talent and doesn’t wildly vary season to season or game vs game. he’s either good enough for this or he got a little ambitious, but i have a feeling someone taking these risks and playing well enough to see the field is going to end up in europe someplace. if roma doesn’t buy he will try someplace else. if roma buys maybe he goes on loan, maybe he manages to stay on. in any event freaking out over one week is odd. to me even seeing the pitch for roma will signal something to other teams over there if this doesn’t work out.
since he was starting here before he left the zelalem illusion doesn’t compare. that’s someone who started high on important books and in the end kept sliding down on past MLS. if he’d started here he would have never ended up there. it’s an illusion furthered along by the helpful passport and hype.