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Gio Reyna cannot help but crack a smile.
It is less than one minute into an interview about the past year and a half of his career and the unknown of the next few months ahead; about the fallout and controversy that swirled around him after the 2022 World Cup and a loan to Nottingham Forest that didn’t go as hoped; and about the uncertainty of where he will play next season.
It has hardly been the path Reyna envisioned after his first full season at Borussia Dortmund in 2020-21. As a 17-year-old, he played in 32 Bundesliga games, scored four goals and registered seven assists. But then, nothing has gone as planned.
He missed most of the 2021-22 season owing to hamstring injuries. He played less than he hoped at that World Cup in Qatar. The controversy about his role, his reaction to it, and an ugly drama that involved his national-team coach Gregg Berhalter and his parents — father Claudio, the former U.S. men’s national-team captain, and mother Danielle, an ex-U.S. women’s national-team player — erupted after the tournament, dominating headlines around Reyna and the USMNT for the next year.
In January 2023, it emerged that,…
