IRVINE, Calif. — It would be easy enough to look at what Gio Reyna did on Friday night as an emphatic and powerful ending.
His goal? That wondrous, outside-of-the-boot, swerving strike to cap off the U.S. men’s national team’s 4-1 masterpiece against Paraguay?
Given Reyna’s brutal four-year stretch that started with his disaster of a 2022 FIFA World Cup and continued through some regrettable family behavior and the ugly saga with former coach Gregg Berhalter, not to mention the endless health and playing time issues with first Borussia Dortmund and then Borussia Mönchengladbach, Reyna’s moment of pure joy at SoFi Stadium felt like a true closing of the book, an inspired conclusion to a dreadful stretch.
But what if it was a beginning instead? That’s certainly what Reyna would prefer; U.S. Soccer, too.
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U.S. manager Maurico Pochettino put Reyna on this World Cup roster because of his unique talent, his preternatural ability that makes it impossible to believe there won’t be a long period in his career where he shows the sport all he is capable of producing.
Pochettino called Reyna a “special situation,” and he’s far from the only one who feels that way. Even the most cynical and critical U.S. Soccer fans — the ones who believe Reyna showed nothing during this past season to merit a spot on this tournament team in the first place — admit that Reyna’s speed, spatial awareness and passing prowess offer the promise of something sensational. They just haven’t seen enough of it.
But Reyna’s national team teammates — the ones who have witnessed his rise through the youth teams and arrival on the biggest stages, as well as his low moments when things didn’t go his way in Qatar — say that they get to see what makes Reyna special all the time. They say Reyna’s cut-above ability flashes constantly in training sessions. They say moments like Friday’s, when Reyna unleashed a so-called “trivela” — that beautiful bender of a blast — aren’t unlikely at all. They’re inevitable.
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“We see stuff from him like that every day,” said Christian Pulisic, “so it’s not a crazy surprise. I told him he deserves it.”
That sentiment — Reyna “deserves” something — might be hard to accept for some outsiders, and that’s fair enough. Fans, critics, former players and anyone else are entitled to feel whatever they want about Reyna’s playing history or injury history or attitude about not playing much at the last World Cup or, really, anything else. He has certainly offered ammunition.
But it’s clear that most of Reyna’s contemporaries — the ones he shares space with in the locker room and at the team base camp and on the bus — see Reyna as having entered a new phase. Reyna himself has said, over and over, that he believes he has matured significantly in the past four years. The difference between a 19-year-old in Qatar and a 23-year-old at a home World Cup with a wife and a baby on the way is meaningful.
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“I’ve known for a couple months now,” Reyna said on Friday after revealing his impending parenthood through a goal celebration in which he pantomimed a pregnant belly by sticking the ball under his jersey while also sucking on his thumb. “I was waiting for the perfect time [to announce it] and this sort of felt like it.”
Maybe it was.
With a hangdog, sheepish smile, Reyna spoke about how his family had recently been hounding him to be a bit more assertive on the field. To seize the opportunities in front of him and, perhaps most specifically, to shoot more. The implication was that, given his paucity of playing time, Reyna was being too deferential, perhaps looking for too perfect a setup whenever he did get on the field.
“I know I have a good shot, but in my position, I look to pass first,” he said. “And they want me to be a little more selfish at times.”
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Even saying that word — selfish — made Reyna recoil a bit, as if he knew how some might perceive it. But then, when a reporter followed up by asking if he felt he should take their advice and shoot more, he shrugged and laughed.
“Yeah, I think I should,” he said. “You know, if that happens in the next couple of games, I’ll take that same opportunity and hopefully get the same result.”
That, obviously, would be incredible for both Reyna and the U.S. But regardless of whether Reyna scores again, it seems hard to imagine Pochettino not turning to him again. For a spark. For a flash. For some of that special.
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We can’t yet understand what this next chapter will contain for Reyna. Maybe more of the same, or maybe — finally — the thrills that everyone imagined. Anything is possible.
All we know for sure right now is this: Last Friday night was some kind of beginning.
