Gio Reyna looked serene, or maybe it was just the carefully cultivated light and airiness bouncing off him in Peleton’s Manhattan headquarters, where we had met up for an interview last summer. Either way, he was healthy and happy for the first time in a while, after his half-season loan to Nottingham Forest had been a bust. He was still only 21 but seemed to have matured. He had just gotten engaged. The beef with US national team coach Gregg Berhalter was behind him – that whole sordid deal when Gio’s parents sparked a civil war within American soccer with ugly allegations against Berhalter around the 2022 World Cup.
He had dazzled, finally reemerging as the Reyna of old, at the Concacaf Nations League Finals in March, where he was named player of the tournament after guiding the US to a third straight title. He seemed perfectly positioned to make his mark on the Copa América. Instead the tournament turned into a debacle for the US. Reyna played plenty, but the host country eventually faced a group-stage elimination-cum-humiliation.
