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Jeff Carlisle
CHESTER, Pennsylvania — It had been 503 days since Gio Reyna last started a game for the U.S. men’s national team. It had been 602 days since he last scored for the USMNT. On a chilly night outside of Philadelphia, the U.S. attacker ended both streaks in a 2-1 friendly win with Paraguay.
It was a performance that marked a major step forward for Reyna in his chance to secure a spot in his second consecutive World Cup squad. It’s a goal that seemed incongruous heading into the match, given Reyna has logged only 147 minutes with club side Borussia Mönchengladbach all season.
But U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino told Reyna at training on Friday that he would be in the starting lineup, and it didn’t take the midfielder long to make his mark in this match.
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In the fourth minute, a goalmouth scramble following a U.S. corner saw the ball fall to Max Arfsten, and his cross was nodded home by Reyna. The U.S. midfielder was also involved in the sequence that led to the U.S. side’s game-winning goal in the 75th minute, when his centering feed was deflected into the path of Folarin Balogun, allowing the AS Monaco forward to slot home.
The USMNT’s initial tally in the match was the ninth of Reyna’s international career, putting him one ahead of his father Claudio on the USMNT’s all-time scoring list and giving the younger Reyna a bit of familial bragging rights.
“Honestly, I had no idea,” Reyna said about passing his father.
“I didn’t even know how many goals I had to be honest, so I was just happy to score, happy to be back. I sent a few texts teasing him after the game, but he was happy for me, so it’s nice.”
Reyna did have a few blips on the night. His failure to close down Paraguay defender Júnior Alonso was the first domino to fall in the buildup to Paraguay’s 10th-minute equalizer by Alex Arce. (Defenders Tim Ream and Miles Robinson needed to drop quicker and deeper on the play as well.)
Yet those were rare for Reyna on the night. He was busy throughout, spraying passes and connecting with teammates. The 75 minutes he logged were his longest in a match since he went 77 minutes for Borussia Dortmund against TSG Hoffenheim on Dec. 15, 2024.
Reyna’s lack of minutes with Gladbach have been due to a few factors. A thigh injury slowed his progress, and he has also been trying to get acclimated to a new club. And while Reyna has long been a player who didn’t need to have everything clicking at the club level to excel for the national team, he credited the support of Gladbach’s staff for helping him deliver Saturday night’s impressive performance. He said he’s back up to 85% of full fitness and expects that to improve.
“Obviously, I had a little injury that I was still recovering from the last few weeks, but they’ve been fantastic with building me up to full fitness and slowly getting there as you can see that tonight,” he said about his club.
“But yeah, I definitely expect when I get back to definitely start more matches, but they’ve been great. So I think it’s a lot of credit to them too and how they’ve sort of pushed me and believed in me and sort of set me back to be prepared to play on this stage.”
He added about his time at Gladbach, “I feel really, really good, feel valued, feel important, feel ready to go. So obviously, when you feel better mentally, you can definitely play better on the field too.”
To be clear, Reyna hasn’t banished all of the doubts surrounding his position with the team going forward.
Think for a second what had to happen for Reyna just to get on the field for this match. Weston McKennie, Christian Pulisic, Malik Tillman, Timothy Weah and Alejandro Zendejas — players who have featured in an attacking role in the past, or could in the future — all missed the match because of either injury or, in the case of McKennie, the desire of Pochettino to leave McKennie back in Italy as he tries to impress new Juventus manager Luciano Spalletti.
When those players return, Reyna will need to find a way to prove to Pochettino that he still deserves to be on the field.
There’s also the rather significant fact that Reyna has yet to really crack the Gladbach lineup consistently. Staying healthy is part of the trick to remaining in the lineup, and Reyna hasn’t shown for some time that he can do that. The performance against Paraguay alone can’t be looked at as a breakthrough. It has to be followed by another, and another, and another.
Reyna realizes this. The clock to the World Cup is ticking with just 208 days to go. But he was presented with a rare opportunity to impress, and he took it. Pochettino certainly took notice.
“[Reyna] confirmed that he’s a player that needs to improve because he needs to play more in his club,” Pochettino said.
“But we can see today that he was great — scored and assisted — in the way that always showed the capacity to read the game and find the free space in between the lines. I think [he] was a nightmare for Paraguay and I think he did a very good job.”
Reyna wasn’t the only player to take advantage. In fact, the rest of this U.S. side, one that was missing enough players to almost field a separate starting lineup, did as well. In the first half, the match settled into the kind of physical contest that was reminiscent of last year’s 1-0 Copa America loss to Uruguay, one that ultimately eliminated the U.S. from the tournament.
In that match, La Celeste slowly ground the U.S. into dust with some ferocious physical play. On this occasion, it was the U.S. who applied the pressure, both physical and technical, by pressing Paraguay bit by bit until La Albirroja finally wilted.
Tanner Tessmann and Brenden Aaronson were instrumental in tilting the field more in the USMNT’s favor. On the game winner, it was that relentless pressing, in this case by substitute Diego Luna, that saw the ball initially pop free to Balogun, who played the ball through to Reyna. The goal soon followed, capping off a night for Balogun that saw him absorb some heavy challenges only to produce in a critical moment.
For Ream, the key to how the U.S. finishes matches can be traced back to how it starts them.
“I think it starts from being aggressive from the first whistle, and kind of in a way just laying a marker and having the other team understand that we’re here to fight, we’re here to play, we’re here to win a game and we’re not going to treat it as a friendly either,” Ream said.
That was evident in stoppage time when Paraguay’s Gustavo Gómez and U.S. defender Alex Freeman grappled for the ball on what was whistled as a U.S. throw-in, sparking a bench-clearing melee. Incredibly, just one red card to Paraguay’s Omar Alderete, who didn’t even play in the game, was issued. But it was another example of how this U.S. team isn’t backing down from anyone.
“There were a few cheap shots thrown from their end to be honest,” said U.S. keeper Matt Freese.
“But it’s part of being a team, and we’re going to be standing up for each other no matter the moment, no matter the end of the game, beginning of the game, in the middle of the game on the sideline like that. That’s what it means to be a team, and I don’t think I’ve ever moved that quickly getting in there.”
The U.S., unbeaten in its past four matches, continues to ride a wave of momentum. With each passing game, there is more cohesion and an increased understanding of what Pochettino wants. The U.S. manager has succeeded in making the U.S. players comfortable with being uncomfortable, and that isn’t about to change.
“Big credit, but that is not enough,” Pochettino said.
“We are happy. We need to keep going because we need to improve, improve, improve, and arrive to the World Cup in our best, in our peak. And that shows that it’s not about the name, it’s about the team, it’s about the collective, it’s about the idea of the altogether.”
Uruguay, a team with its own ethos of physicality and grit, combined with ability (it had a 0-0 draw against Mexico on the same night), is up next on Tuesday. Reyna in particular feels ready to go and will be keen to prove he’s back for good.