Mauricio Pochettino says Gio Reyna isn’t fit to play ‘in the way that we expect’ for the USMNT

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — If the biggest talking point from the U.S. men’s soccer team’s upset loss to Panama in the Concacaf Nations League semifinals was the players’ lack of intensity, the second-biggest talking point was a player who didn’t play.

Gio Reyna’s absence felt especially notable on a night when his teammates failed to create many scoring chances. Mauricio Pochettino said postgame that he planned to deploy Reyna or fast-rising prospect Diego Luna in extra time, but Cecilio Waterman’s late goal meant extra time never happened.

Could Reyna have come in sooner? A chorus on the outside would have done it, and perhaps, in hindsight, Pochettino would have, too. But there always was one caveat: his lack of playing time at his club, Germany’s Borussia Dortmund. How much could Reyna handle with the national team at his fitness level?

The answer came in Pochettino’s news conference Saturday, before Sunday’s third-place game vs. Canada (6 p.m., UniMás, TUDN, Paramount+): Not enough for an extended run.

» READ MORE: No matter the politics, the USMNT lost a game to Panama that it should have won

“He is not playing too much in his club,” Pochettino said. “With not too much time to work and to know the player, I think [this] was a great opportunity. That doesn’t mean that he’s ready to play in the way that we expect from him, to perform.”

He reiterated that he hopes to play Reyna on Sunday, but he didn’t say how much.

“For sure, I hope that tomorrow he has some minutes,” Pochettino said. “But the most important thing is how he is showing now in every single training session and spending time with us. Because I think he’s not maybe at his best, but he’s here [for the staff] to try to know him and from here to help him to arrive at his best. That is the reality.”

Pochettino also did not hesitate to say how important Reyna can be if he reaches the level the manager wants.

“I think he’s an important player,” he said. “He’s a player that we need to recover and put in the same level to the rest of the players to have the possibility to compete for a place in the World Cup.”

» READ MORE: USMNT upset by Panama in Concacaf Nations League semifinals, 1-0

The intensity question came up again Thursday, to no surprise, and Pochettino had plenty more to say.

“Maybe you can find different ways to motivate people or group [as a manager],” he said. “But at the same time, you need to identify the players that have their own motivation and their own aggressiveness, because they are comfortable behaving in this way. If someone doesn’t feel that whole motivation, it’s difficult.”

Pochettino notably touched on a subject that many outsiders have pondered: Do some players take it easier with the national team than they do with their clubs, where the daily competition for playing time is stronger?

He felt compelled to reach back to his playing experiences in Europe and his native Argentina. And if he didn’t quite have the words in English to explain his feeling, some feelings transcend words.

“It’s to care,” he said. “It’s to maybe feel like when we play in our clubs, if we lose, it’s [of] some consequence. Maybe that doesn’t happen sometimes [with the national team]. I don’t say that you don’t care, but I think you take it in a more relaxed way.”

» READ MORE: Four years after leaving the Union, Mark McKenzie is one of the team’s great success stories

Against Panama, he continued, “I think we all felt that in the end, [there] will appear the opportunity, and we will score, and we will win the game, and we celebrate and go for the final Sunday. I think that was the feeling. On the pitch, it was the feeling for you, for the player, and for us.”

You can guess what he said next.

“That is a wrong feeling,” Pochettino said. “Because you need to score, you need to be aggressive, you need to be proactive. Score two, three, four-nil, and then, OK, be relaxed.”

Pochettino put some responsibility on himself, since he picked the lineup and made some unexpected choices: Weston McKennie at attacking midfield and Yunus Musah at right back, for example.

“That maybe was my fault, and now we need to select different players and see if that happens [better],” he said.

» READ MORE: How Zack Steffen worked his way back to the U.S. men's soccer team after missing the 2022 World Cup

Though the luster of the matchup is dimmed because it’s the third-place game, some of the political tensions will still simmer. Canada manager Jesse Marsch, a Wisconsin native who played collegiately at Princeton, has often been willing to address the issue and did so again.

“There’s still the rhetoric out there about the ‘51st state,’ but I think people are becoming more numb to it than what they were a month ago during the Four Nations [hockey] tournament,” he said. “However, we are still very aware that there’s still a different climate than what there was even the last time we played the U.S. in September.”

He’s also well aware of how much criticism there’s been of the team he’ll face — one he long dreamed of coaching before taking the Canada job.

“More importantly, I’ve heard from the [U.S.] camp that they’re internally disappointed with their performance,” Marsch said. “And then the media here in the U.S., I think that [it] has been very aggressive about how disappointed they are in this team, and now they’ve turned a little bit and put it toward the players. So we would be very foolish if based on those two factors, we don’t expect a hard, real game and a big response from the U.S. national team.”

» READ MORE: At the Nations League final four, Mauricio Pochettino tries to balance the USMNT’s present and future

Sunday’s matchup also will mark the first time Marsch is on the opposite bench from U.S. stalwart Tyler Adams, instead of on the same one. Marsch developed Adams at the New York Red Bulls (with current Union manager Bradley Carnell as an assistant), then coached the midfielder twice in Europe at Germany’s RB Leipzig and England’s Leeds United.

Asked what that will be like, Marsch admitted he hadn’t thought about it yet.

“Yeah, that will be weird,” he said, and the media in the room laughed with him. “It’s no secret how much I love Tyler and how much I believe in him as a player. … I think he’s the heart and soul of their team.”

» READ MORE: Brenden Aaronson (whom Jesse Marsch also coached in Europe) was a surprising omission from the USMNT's Nations League roster

Adams had a similar feeling about his old boss.

“Yeah, that’s going to be strange, I have to be honest with you,” he said. “It’s a manager that’s meant a lot to me and a person that’s meant a lot to me in my career. ... When someone like that sits across from your family and gives you an evaluation of where I’m at and where I’m trying to go, he’s obviously made a lot of that come to fruition.”

No one knows better how well Adams can cut off a team’s attack through midfield, and Marsch said he’ll make that point to his players.

“We’re definitely going to be aware, when we play through the middle, that he’s incredibly aggressive at winning duels and winning balls and pressing and counter-pressing,” he said. “Maybe those are all products of things that I’ve taught him over the years. But what an incredible person, what an incredible player.”