Former Sunderland star Claudio Reyna and his family are at the centre of an extraordinary row that has led to US Soccer investigating claims of a domestic violence incident made against national team head coach Gregg Berhalter. The feud stems from the fact that Reyna's son Gio - who was born in Sunderland in 2002 during his father's 20-month stint with the Black Cats - played just 52 minutes of football under Berhalter in the World Cup in Qatar, despite the Borussia Dortmund midfielder having been tipped to make a major impact in the tournament.
During the tournament, Berhalter said that an unnamed player had displayed a lack of commitment and a poor attitude, and the players had held a vote to decide whether he should remain with the squad in Qatar - with his teammates deciding by a single vote that he should stay. Gio Reyna later confirmed that he was the player whose fate was decided by the vote.
This week the situation took an unexpected twist when Berhalter made a statement saying that during the World Cup an unnamed individual had tried to 'take him down', by reporting a domestic violence incident between him and his then-girlfriend - and now wife of 25 years Rosalind - that took place in 1991, to US Soccer and effectively implied that he was being blackmailed. Berhalter's statement said: "During the World Cup an individual contacted U.S. Soccer, saying that they had information about me that would 'take me down' - an apparent effort to leverage something very personal from long ago to bring about the end of my relationship with U.S. Soccer.
