Who is Gio Reyna?
The answer depends on who's asking the question. The average American probably knows him as the kid whose parents tried to blackmail U.S. men's national team coach Gregg Berhalter out of a job during the World Cup. But I think -- I hope? -- we can move on from that.
To many USMNT fans, then, Reyna represents the ceiling of the team's potential. Imagine what might've happened in Qatar had Reyna been healthy and not feuding with the manager?
For all of the success of the current generation -- already the most successful generation of American soccer players -- the likes of Christian Pulisic and Tyler Adams are top players in large part because they're top athletes who can cover lots of space. While Reyna isn't lacking in athletic ability or size, he offers a different kind of promise to the other top Americans -- one where a playmaker steps on the ball, slows the game down, glides past defenders and slips in a through-ball. It's a vision of American soccer that we've never actually seen in the real world before.
When you ask everyone else in the soccer world, including his current club team, who Gio Reyna is, he exists as a projection more so than as an actual player. He's a promising young talent in a competitive landscape with more of them than ever before. He's a 20-year-old who has started 10 games for Borussia Dortmund since we started letting fans back in the stands.
In reality, none of us really know who Gio Reyna is because none of us ever really get to watch him play.
