For the first time since the U.S. men’s national team’s CONCACAF Nations League disappointment last March, Gio Reyna is back in the fold with a point to prove.
Reyna was called into Mauricio Pochettino’s 25-player roster on Thursday ahead of upcoming home friendlies against Paraguay and Uruguay. The 22-year-old midfielder has been on loan this season with Bundesliga club Borussia Moenchengladbach, logging 131 minutes in five appearances.
Although Reyna showed plenty of potential with Borussia Dortmund, the last two years have been rough for him. Reyna has scored one goal and added two assists in eight caps with the USMNT since the start of 2024, but has only cap under his belt this year.
Reyna made 26 appearances for the Black and Yellow since the start of last season, despite logging only 627 minutes at club level. Multiple injuries paired with a lack of consistent playing time has hampered Reyna’s development overseas, which has carried over to the USMNT during Pochettino’s spell as head coach.
With only seven months until the FIFA World Cup begins and only two international windows until Pochettino’s final roster is named for the summer competition, time is running out for Reyna to boost his stock.
Pochettino hasn’t had tons of opportunities to work with the talented midfielder, but knows his potential and admitted the importance of Reyna’s latest chance this month.
“He has enormous, enormous talent and it’s true that he’s not playing too much but I think it’s a good opportunity in November,” Pochettino said Thursday in a press conference about Reyna. “We need to understand that sometimes some players struggle to play but can be important for us. That is why. It is not contradictory, my message.”
Reyna has scored eight goals in 32 caps to date for the USMNT and will be eager to add to those numbers starting with November 15th’s showdown against Paraguay in Pennsylvania.
Reyna continues to be given every chance possible. He averages 25 mins a game with Bundesliga door matt and now he is USMNT worthy again! Any G or A yet this season?
This isn’t a vacuum, 8g 5a in 32 app.
Pretty unique case though. Reyna has a proven track record with the USMNT, when at his best he was MVP of a regional final we won against Mexico. No one else out there not already in the team can say that, and most in the team can’t. With three of our top attackers out injured this window, why not give him one last chance? Smart roll of the dice by Poch.
My concern is that his fitness level is going limit his ability to play significant minutes at this time. He had one start then got hurt and has been limited to a few bench minutes since.
JR,
I’m sure Pochettino agrees with you. The last time Mauricio had him in Reyna was barely fit and in a much darker space.
Right now, even with so few minutes and BMG being such a crap team, Gio is in a much more positive reasonable place and it should give Pochettino a much better idea of what he really has , today, if anything, in Gio. And he can still make any decison he has on including Gio conditional on what goes down in the next few months with BMG.
Gio said it himself, if he’s fit and and is going well, he gives the USMNT a talent upgrade in a number of postions.
If you like Malik, Gio can be a better, more versatile Malik.
Treating your players fairly does not mean that you treat them all the same.
If Gio is “back” and Pochettino is right about it. absolutely no one will worry about the fairness of it all.
I see it as since he’s not playing much for club for reasons stated (he joined in the 78th minute today winning 3-0 already) that Poch can give him progressively more with the USMNT than he might get in Germany, which is a good thing for him. I get why he is called, as JR and jb noted.
@Vac, I’ll disagree some with your ratings of Gio and Malik, and it’s on the defensive side of the ball, where Malik has improved, and shown it in the uni, too.
beachbum,
Neither has been tried there often enough but I’ve long thought that both Malik and Gio might eventually wind up as a deep lying playmaker and do really well there. I’m biased towards Gio but when it looked like we would not see Gio anymore I wasn’t overly worried because Malik was and can be a perfect replacement.
That the USMNT might have the two of them at the same time, all the better.
This his chance to not only show that he would be worth a supersub role, but to also show that he will be a good teammate. If everyone is healthy come WC he may be that attacker strictly in a supersub role.