Mauricio Pochettino selected a player who had started four Bundesliga games all season, logged 137 league minutes since January, and carried more baggage than almost anyone in American soccer. Then Gio Reyna curled one into the far corner at SoFi Stadium with the outside of his right foot, and suddenly none of that mattered.
That goal against Paraguay wasn't pretty in the conventional sense. Paraguay's defense was set, the angle was tight, safer options were everywhere. Reyna ignored all of them, nudged the ball into space, opened his body, and bent it away from the goalkeeper. The kind of finish that can't be coached into someone. Either you see it or you don't.
Reyna sees it.
The selection nobody could fully defend — until now
When Pochettino named his 26-man World Cup roster, Reyna's inclusion was the easiest one to attack. The numbers were damning on the surface. Four starts. Four months without a Bundesliga appearance. A U.S. player pool deeper than any in the country's history, full of players actually getting minutes at club level.
Pochettino never flinched. "He is a very talented player, and we know how he can add to the national team," he said back in March. Not what Reyna had done lately. What he could contribute. That's a meaningful distinction, and one most coaches are too risk-averse to act on.
The November internationals gave Pochettino his cover. Reyna scored against Paraguay, assisted against Uruguay, and looked — according to Tim Ream — like he was playing some of the best football of his career. "Found pockets of space, connected attacks, turned in areas where most players would recycle possession," Ream said. That kind of movement is invisible in a data pull. Coaches watch it live and remember it for months.
Four years after Qatar, a completely different picture
The 2022 World Cup nearly buried Reyna's career. Gregg Berhalter froze him out, reports surfaced about his reaction to limited minutes, and what followed became one of the stranger off-field sagas in U.S. Soccer history — one that dragged in both families and dominated headlines long after the tournament ended.
That version of Reyna — the frustrated prodigy, the controversy magnet, the talent who never quite arrived — was the lens American soccer kept using to evaluate him. Pochettino threw the lens out.
What stood out after the squad announcement wasn't Reyna talking about revenge or redemption. "This time around, I'm just willing to do whatever it takes," he said. "Whatever's called for by me, I'll be willing to help." No point-proving. No agenda. Just a 23-year-old who sounded like he understood his role and was fine with it.
That's a different player from the one who left Qatar three years ago.
The goal celebration added another layer. First he covered his ears — make of that what you will, given everything — then tucked the ball under his shirt and sucked his thumb. He and his wife are expecting their first child. He'd been sitting on that information for months, waiting for the right moment. "This sort of felt like it," he said afterward. Hard to argue.
From the outside, it's tempting to frame this as a redemption arc, a comeback story, proof that talent always finds a way. But the simpler read might be more accurate: Pochettino watched Reyna play football, decided his specific gifts were rare enough to matter at a World Cup, and was right. The stat sheet said no. The goal said otherwise.
