On Thursday night, the USMNT took another big step towards the World Championship. This was partly due to the fact that the United States abandoned caution and fielded the strongest possible composition against Mexico. For their courage, the team left with a well-deserved draw. In addition, Panama, agreeing to a draw with Honduras that same evening, made the Americans’ path to Qatar even clearer. Barring a big and unlikely swing in goal difference, the US could automatically qualify for the World Cup with just two points from their remaining two matches. Continue Panama at home on Sunday. Win, and the US is essentially in business.
For USMNT fans still traumatized by the 2018 disaster, the whole thing can still be a little unnerving. Nobody could blame you for this. Once again, the US will push its qualifying campaign to the limit, and we all remember what happened last time. However, I would say that this team and the generation of players who run it have already done enough to earn our trust. We must feel confident and expect the US to do what we have no real reason to doubt, and must enjoy not only the qualification process, but also the expectation of what awaits this group. As evidence to support this opinion, I would like to point you to one moment from yesterday’s game:
Above is a video of Gio Reyna demonstrating one of the most breathtaking tricks I have ever seen from an American player. In it, he picks up the ball a few yards from his own box and continues to run for more than half the length of the field, all the way to the front of Mexico’s box, past seven-seven! way. At all times, he has been the only real threat that the Mexican defense has to worry about. Only some sloppy shuffling by Jordan Pefok and an initial but quickly abandoned attempt by Christian Pulisic help Reina’s cause in any way. And yet, despite having all the defense piled on him, and with the most meager maintenance runs, Reyna continues to hack and jump across the field, demonstrating what I tend to call an unprecedented level of dominance in modern American football history.
I don’t know exactly how the stats would describe the game – a run with four or five “completed strokes”? “progressive carry” at 70 yards? a move without a “key pass” or strike, ending with a “flip” after a “successful grab”? — but I know what it means: it means that Gio Reina is a star, a player who can ingeniously touch and feel the ball and the game that the whole world would like to call his own (if he made this run in the Argentine jersey, which he could have, since it is his grandfather’s country of birth, they would call it something directly from their favorite potreros), someone who has the technique for such a game, and also, last but not least, the personality for it, pure intelligence to want to run and keep running to show how good he is. Watching the match live, I was a little annoyed in the middle of the run when Reina refused to flank Pulisic, which could have set the team up for a chance on goal. Moments later, after the gassed Pulisic had already slammed on the brakes and Reina had pushed past another defender or two, I no longer thought about scoring. Instead, I hoped that Reyna would run forever until someone proved worthy of stopping him.
Maybe my priorities are off, but watching a player like Reina do something like that is exactly what I want from Team USA. It is both a means to future success and an end in itself. Qualifying for the World Cup and performing well at the event both depend on process, and the process is about discovering, developing and then showing great talent. Reyna and his move—and the U.S. willingness to play Azteca fearlessly, aiming for and likely deserving a win rather than scoring a draw—proves that the process works, and they communicate that success by their very existence. A player, a run and a team like that deserve to qualify for the World Cup and I believe the sport is behaving in a way that tends to reward the deserving.
That’s why I’m not worried and why I trust that Reyna and the others will lead us to where we need to be. If the scars of the last cycle prevent you from trusting this feeling in yourself, you can at least trust that the players believe it and that they have more than enough talent to do it.