Gio Reyna Responds to Report of 'Lack of Effort' at USMNT World Cup Training

Gio Reyna has responded to a report from Paul Tenorio and Sam Stejskal of The Athletic that said the young Borussia Dortmund attacker showed an "alarming lack of effort in training" in the week before the World Cup.

Reyna released a statement Monday on Instagram in which he said he let his emotions affect his training and behavior after USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter told him he would play a limited role at the World Cup:

"Just before the World Cup, Coach Berhalter told me that my role at the tournament would be very limited. I was devastated. I am someone who plays with pride and passion. Soccer is my life, and I believe in my abilities. I fully expected and desperately wanted to contribute to the play of a talented group as we tried to make a statement at the World Cup.

"I am also a very emotional person, and I fully acknowledge that I let my emotions get the best of me and affect my training and behavior for a few days after learning about my limited role. I apologized to my teammates and coach for this, and I was told I was forgiven. Thereafter, I shook off my disappointment and gave everything I had on and off the field."

Reyna added that he was "disappointed that there is continuing coverage of this matter (as well as some highly fictionalized versions of events) and extremely surprised that anyone on the U.S. men's team staff would contribute to it," noting Berhalter had said in the past that team-related issues would remain "in house."

Berhalter alluded to the situation with Reyna at the HOW Institute for Society's Summit on Moral Leadership on Tuesday (h/t Kevin J. Delaney of CharterWorks), though he didn't name him:

"In this last World Cup, we had a player that was clearly not meeting expectations on and off the field. One of 26 players, so it stood out. As a staff, we sat together for hours deliberating what we were going to do with this player. We were ready to book a plane ticket home, that's how extreme it was. And what it came down to was, we're going to have one more conversation with him, and part of the conversation was how we're going to behave from here out. There aren't going to be any more infractions.

"But the other thing we said to him was, you're going to have to apologize to the group, but it's going to have to say why you're apologizing. It's going to have to go deeper than just 'Guys, I'm sorry.' And I prepped the leadership group with this. I said, 'Okay, this guy's going to apologize to you as a group, to the whole team.' And what was fantastic in this whole thing is that after he apologized, they stood up one by one and said, 'Listen, it hasn't been good enough, You haven't been meeting our expectations of a teammate and we want to see change.' They really took ownership of that process. And from that day on there were no issues with this player."

CharterWorks later said in an editor's note that Berhalter's comments "were not meant to be public, but were erroneously greenlit for publication by someone representing the event organizers."

Berhalter also said the meeting was supposed to be off the record and that "it's not really important" who the player in question was, per ESPN's Jeff Carlisle.

But further reporting indicated the player was Reyna.

It wasn't hard to suss out that Berhalter was speaking about the 20-year-old, one of the USMNT's brightest young talents but someone who played a surprisingly small role in the team's four games at the World Cup.

While it didn't come as a huge surprise that Reyna didn't start—the midfield trio of Tyler Adams, Yunus Musah and Weston McKennie was the strength of the team, and wingers Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah were its most dangerous attackers—the fact that he wasn't even a substitute in two games became a major storyline.

The team missed his creativity and passing while struggling to unlock deep defensive blocks, though he did play the entire second half in the USMNT's 3-1 loss to the Netherlands in the round of 16.

That may have been an indication that all had been resolved. It remains to be seen if the airing of the dirty laundry, even if unintentional by Berhalter, creates a rift between the two men or between Reyna and the U.S. Soccer Federation.