Four Years Older and Wiser, USA’s Gio Reyna Eyes Another World Cup Trip: ‘I Learned So Much’

FIFA Men’s World Cup

Updated May. 12, 2026 1:42 p.m. ET

Gio Reyna was just 19 when he boarded a plane from Germany to Doha ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, expecting to play a major role for a United States squad loaded with fellow youngsters who were stepping onto football’s biggest stage for the first time.

Because the national team’s previous generation had failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup — the Americans’ first miss in more than three decades — the only player on the squad with prior World Cup experience was veteran defender DeAndre Yedlin. The USA navigated the group stage by drawing England and beating Iran, but were outclassed by the Netherlands in the round of 16.

Reyna, famously, barely played. Almost four injury-plagued years later, the now 23-year-old is desperate to reach another World Cup, this one on home soil. And he’s armed with lessons from the past. “I think just individually and collectively, we were all very, very young and maybe a little bit inexperienced at the time,” Reyna said Tuesday from Germany in a video conference with reporters hosted by Borussia Mönchengladbach, his club. “And then in the end, it sort of just happened that we came up against a Holland team that was a little bit more experienced, a little bit better, a little bit more savvy with the game, and in the end, it was almost too much for us.” “Obviously, it’s an amazing experience,” he continued. “I learned so much from that.”

Unlike last time around, Reyna isn’t a lock to make the 26-man American roster this time. But he’s making a late push. The New York native, son of two-time U.S. World Cup captain Claudio Reyna (and former women’s national teamer Danielle Egan), scored his first Bundesliga goal of the campaign last weekend. Perhaps more important, he logged 32 minutes off the bench — the most he’s played in any match since December. Reyna was sidelined by a muscle ailment midway through the season, but he is approaching full fitness now — up from the 85 percent he said he was in November after scoring for the U.S. in an exhibition win over Paraguay. The tournament co-hosts will face the same opponent in its World Cup curtain-raiser in Los Angeles on June 12.

“I don’t know if any player is really ever 100-percent — there’s always knocks and things that come up at this point in the season,” Reyna told me on Tuesday. “But yeah, I feel ready to play sort of 90 minutes, and feel that I can give my max at this moment in time. So I guess you could say 100 percent. I feel very, very fit. I feel very sharp. And all I really want to do is show it on the pitch.”

Pochettino, the former Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain manager, will name the U.S. World Cup roster on May 26. “I have a great relationship with Mauricio,” Reyna said of the Argentine, who used him off the bench in a pair of World Cup tune-ups in late March. “When we’re in camp, he’s very clear and keeps things simple.”