DUSSELDORF, Germany — Giovanni Reyna comes into the room. He sits down. He leans back in his chair and, after maybe 30 seconds of small talk, he says, “Listen, I don’t want to look back in the past. At all.” He smiles.
Reyna isn’t being unreasonable. He has had, by any measure, a brutal year. There was a hamstring. There was a thigh. There was a hamstring. There was a tweak. There was an illness. There was a twinge. Reyna is still only 19, but he has already had a taste of middle age, the injuries seemingly never stopping. Reyna missed 34 of Borussia Dortmund’s past 45 matches and 15 of the past 19 for the United States in the past 12 months. Watching that much soccer when you should be playing? Reyna withered. He wilted.
So it makes sense that he wants to look ahead. With the World Cup just eight weeks away, Reyna is finally healthy. He and his coaches, including U.S. boss Gregg Berhalter, are being careful not to overdo his workload too soon, but of the very (very) few positives for the United States that came out of Friday’s 2-0 loss to Japan in Dusseldorf, Reyna’s first start for the Americans since last September was significant.
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Reyna was hardly amazing. No one on the U.S., save for goalkeeper Matt Turner, had anything close to an excellent performance against Japan. Any team that fails to register a shot on goal despite having nearly 60% possession deserves the criticism it receives.
Reyna did show flashes, though. The best chance for the U.S. came in the first half, when he pinged a pass to set up Sergino Dest ripping down the edge before crossing to Jesus Ferreira directly in front of goal. That Ferreira weakly headed over was unfortunate, but the passage of play leading up to it was exactly what fans (and Berhalter) have been craving.
So, too, was the sequence when Reyna took the ball in his own half and went on a run, cutting in and out of defenders and moving the U.S., all on his own, into…
Source : espn
