Reyna scores — but is he in the World Cup squad?

The drought is over — now what?

A full year without a goal is a long time for any attacking player. For Reyna, a footballer whose ceiling has been talked up since he was a teenager at Borussia Dortmund, it has been a period of frustrating stasis — the kind that makes national team coaches quietly move on while publicly keeping the door open.

The goal itself — the match context not yet fully reported — at least gives him something to point to. A number on the board. Proof the instinct is still there. But Reyna knows, and said as much, that one goal doesn't close the argument.

The honest answer nobody expected

Asked whether he deserves to be in the USMNT squad for the 2026 World Cup, Reyna told ESPN FC it was hard to answer. That's not a deflection — that's a player who has watched the group move forward and knows exactly where he stands in the pecking order.

It's the kind of self-awareness that tends to come after a difficult stretch. And it lands differently when the tournament in question is on home soil, in front of American crowds who have been waiting for this moment for decades. The stakes for every roster spot are unusually high.

What the coaching staff needs to see

One goal reopens the conversation; it doesn't win it. USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino — building his picture of the squad ahead of the summer — will want to see Reyna producing consistently at club level, staying fit across a run of games, and showing the kind of decisive quality in tight moments that his talent has always promised.

The competition for attacking positions in this squad is real. Christian Pulisic remains the first name on the teamsheet. Around him, the picture is contested — and Reyna, for all his ability, has spent too much of the past two years on the periphery to assume anything.

The next few months matter more than the last year

Here's the thing about a home World Cup: it compresses everything. The margin for a player to rebuild form, prove fitness, and force a coach's hand is narrower than it would be in a normal cycle. Reyna has weeks, not months, to make the case.

The goal is a start. The honesty is, in its own way, a start too — a player who knows what's required tends to work harder to get there. Whether that's enough is a question only the next fixture can begin to answer.

He didn't say he should be in the squad. He didn't say he shouldn't be. That, right now, is exactly where things stand.