Gio Reyna has been in their shoes.
Like his new USA teammates Cavan Sullivan and Neil Pierre, Reyna was once a blue-chip teenager participating in his first national team camp, as Albert and Mehmeti are ahead of four home exhibition games against Peru, Chile, Mexico and Canada — the Stars and Stripes’ first set of matches since the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Now the former prodigy is 23. He’s played for four clubs across Germany, England and France. He’s a two-time World Cup veteran with a wife and a baby on the way.
“I’m still very young, still have a lot to prove to myself and to other people,” Reyna told reporters this week from U.S. Soccer’s sprawling training facility outside of Atlanta.
Gio Reyna is now a two-time World Cup veteran. (Photo by Jane Gershovich/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
Reyna is also a proven international player at this stage of his career, one who, along with the 12 other World Cup veterans on this unusually inexperienced 28-player roster, is suddenly responsible for helping guide the next generation of American stars.
It’s a big change for many of the U.S. mainstays.
Take Sebastian Berhalter, who played just seven times for his country this time last year and was still far from being a lock on coach Mauricio Pochettino’s 26-man World Cup squad. Berhalter went on to secure his spot, appearing in all five U.S. matches during the tournament and scoring in a 3-2 group stage loss to Türkiye.
In a locker room where the current average age is under 23 — more than four years younger than the World Cup group — Berhalter, 25, is a grizzled pro.
“I’ve only been part of the team for a year now, which is crazy, but it’s good,” Berhalter said of the elders’ newly expanded off-field role. “I think it’s something that we take in stride. For us, it’s about our individual performances and making sure we’re keeping the standard [high], after which additionally exhibiting everybody round us what it takes” at soccer’s highest degree.
Cavan Sullivan is the centerpiece of the subsequent technology of USA gamers.(Picture by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Pictures)
That course of will proceed till camp wraps up following the Canada match in St. Paul, Minnesota on Oct. 6. Pochettino has overseen simply two coaching classes to this point and doesn’t even have his full contingent of invitees but; skilled heart backs Chris Richards and Auston Trusty performed abroad on Sunday, for Crystal Palace and Celtic respectively, and gained’t work out with their fellow People till Wednesday.
Nonetheless, the newcomers have made a very good first impression on the outdated guard.
“Once I have a look at all these younger gamers, they’re very skilled,” Miles Robinson instructed me Tuesday throughout a videoconference. “They’re very mature for being 16, 18, 20 years outdated. They’ve an understanding of the sport, and I feel they wish to be taught and get higher and develop and develop.
“That is the mindset that it’s a must to have as a younger participant,” added the 29-year-old Robinson, who featured in a single World Cup sport over the summer time. “You wish to be like a kind of sponges that takes in the whole lot, that acknowledges there’s a lot to be taught and there is a lot to sort of develop inside your personal sport and the sport collectively as a staff. So I feel so long as they maintain an open thoughts, we’ve bought a vibrant future.”
Mauricio Pochettino is about to remain by way of 2030. (Picture by Jamie Squire/Getty Pictures)
With longtime nationwide staff starters Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie absent from this camp, the longer term is now. The 16-year-old Sullivan and 18-year-old Pierre, each of the Philadelphia Union in MLS, may log huge minutes over the primary two video games. So may the six different teenagers referred to as in, with the good cash on Pochettino going along with his strongest lineups within the early October contests in opposition to Concacaf foes Canada and El Tri — groups he hasn’t overwhelmed but because the U.S. boss.
“Clearly [I’m] slightly nervous coming in right here — these gamers I sort of watched rising up slightly bit, and within the World Cup,” stated Pierre, who credited his formative six-month mortgage to Danish membership Lyngby earlier this 12 months with serving to him hit the bottom working when he returned to the Union in July. “However on the finish of the day, I feel everybody’s right here to compete.
Neil Pierre is one other USA participant to observe. (Picture by Elsa/Getty Pictures)
Off the sector, the work of making the togetherness that has been the hallmark of the perfect U.S. groups for generations is already underway.
“Everybody’s sort of identical to, Hey, welcome to the household,” Pierre stated of the returnees, including that they’ve already helped make him really feel comfy by imploring him to not fear about inevitably making errors.
“My objective,” Pierre continued, “Is to proceed to be with the boys’s nationwide staff and do my finest and put my finest foot ahead.”
