A remarkable insight into the surprise lack of game-time afforded to United States of America talent Gio Reyna at the World Cup has been forthcoming late on Sunday night.
Highly-regarded starlet Reyna, of course, was expected to play a prominent role for his country in Qatar.
Despite a swathe of injury problems across the early years of his fledgling career, the Borussia Dortmund attacker remains widely regarded as one of the USA’s most gifted youth products ever.
A grand total of 52 minutes on the pitch across the Stars and Stripes’ four World Cup outings therefore culminated in inevitable questions surrounding a potential issue in the camp.
And now, as alluded to above, precisely that has been confirmed.
This comes after a head-turning round of quotes attributed to Gregg Berhalter, highlighting the attitude problems of a then-unnamed member of his squad, made their way online.
“In this last World Cup, we had a player that was clearly not meeting expectations on and off the field,” Berhalter began. “One of 26 players, so it stood out. As a staff, we sat together for hours deliberating what we were going to do with this player. We were ready to book a plane ticket home, that’s how extreme it was. And what it came down to was, we’re going to have one more conversation with him, and part of the conversation was how we’re going to behave from here out. There aren’t going to be any more infractions.
“But the other thing we said to him was, you’re going to have to apologize to the group, but it’s going to have to say why you’re apologizing. It’s going to have to go deeper than just, ‘Guys, I’m sorry.’ And I prepped the leadership group with this. I said, ‘OK, this guy is going to apologize to you as a group, to the whole team.’ And what was fantastic in this whole thing is that after he apologized, they stood up one by one and said, ‘Listen, it hasn’t been good enough. You haven’t been meeting our expectations of a teammate and we want to see change.’ They really took ownership of that process. And from that day on there were no issues with this player.
“As a coach, the way you can deal with things most appropriately is going back to your values. Because it’s difficult to send a player home. It was going to be a massive controversy. You would have been reading about it for five days straight. But we were prepared to do it, because he wasn’t meeting the standards of the group, and the group was prepared to do it as well.”
Since, though, the anonymity of the player referenced by Berhalter has been lost.
This comes owing to a report from The Athletic, in which the aforementioned Reyna’s disciplinary shortcomings are laid bare.
Ahead of the US’ opening fixture of the tournament against Wales, the ‘alarming lack of effort’ put forth by the 20-year-old in training is said to have left both the nation’s coaching staff, and his teammates, utterly baffled.
‘The lack of effort was so pronounced that it was unclear whether Reyna was protecting against an injury or just frustrated that he was not set to be a starter against Wales’, it is claimed.
Gio Reyna did not feel like partying…
— Tactical Manager (@ManagerTactical) November 30, 2022
Reyna sparked yet further concern after throwing his shin guards upon discovering that he would play no part against Wales, forcing several veteran members of the US setup to pull him aside and plead for an improved display of effort.
Such instances ultimately culminated in Reyna, to his credit, standing up in front of the entirety of the coaching and playing staff during a video session, to issue a formal apology.
After a constructive exchange with several teammates, an uptick in effort, in turn, was noted on the part of the young attacker, with any remaining tension, in turn, squashed.
Why Gio Reyna didn’t play more at the #FIFAWorldCup
▪️ ‘Alarming lack of effort’ in pre-tournament friendly
▪️ Confronted by #USMNT teammates
▪️ Told to apologise to the group after Wales match📝 @PaulTenorio @samstejskalhttps://t.co/gd3K2xB0Ug
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) December 11, 2022
PSG bound? Kylian Mbappe responds to Marcus Rashford message
