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Jeff Carlisle, U.S. soccer correspondent
Gio Reyna is stuck.
As the summer transfer window closed last week in the major European leagues, some players celebrated the completion of getting new deals. Others felt the disappointment of remaining in suboptimal playing situations. Reyna, the Borussia Dortmund and USMNT midfielder, is definitely anchored in the latter category.
That Reyna needs to find a way to get on the pitch is clear. Where that can happen isn’t as obvious. Last season, he logged a total of just 329 minutes in 13 league and cup appearances. That included his loan spell at Premier League side Nottingham Forest, which didn’t go anywhere near like he wanted, as he found himself mostly on the bench as Forest battled to avoid relegation.
Reyna then returned to Dortmund, where new manager Nuri Şahin was waiting for him. There was hope that a different coach would arrive at a different conclusion as to how much Reyna could help, but there’s been little change in fortune. Reyna has made just a solitary league appearance this season for a total of nine minutes so far.
Yet Dortmund are keen to hold onto Reyna. There will be UEFA Champions League games to test the depth of Die Schwarzgelben, which would seemingly point to more playing opportunities for the U.S. international than he received last year. Reyna certainly appears to be a player realizing he needs to do everything he can to force his way into the lineup.
His efforts have been noticed by the Dortmund brass.
“He worked on himself, worked on his stability, worked on his charisma,” Dortmund sporting director Sebastian Kehl told Bild. “This clever turning between the lines and his goal threat — he has developed that further. Gio can still be very important for us this season.”
That Dortmund want to hang on to Reyna, at least for the time being, is understandable. They’ve invested a lot in the player over the years and showed patience in terms of his numerous injuries, hoping that he would come good. There is a natural reluctance to cut loose a talented, skillful player who might end up shining elsewhere. It also speaks well of Reyna’s mentality that he wants to fight his way back into the Dortmund lineup. If he can achieve a breakthrough, he might yet take the long-awaited next step in his career.
That said, can Reyna achieve that when he’s consigned to bit-part status? That’s unlikely, and a strong argument can be made that such a role will see Reyna’s game stagnate further. He needs to find a better situation.
“I think he needs to go to a club that’s building around him, where he is the man,” said former U.S. men’s national team assistant Luchi Gonzalez, who coached Reyna during the last World Cup cycle.
“I don’t know if that’s in Germany. I don’t know if that’s in the Netherlands. I don’t know if that’s in Belgium. I don’t know if that’s in Spain. But I know there are plenty of teams out there that would love to build around him and have him be the man for them. I’m excited to see that develop with time. And I think once he does that, then little by little, he can maybe go back to a similar club like Dortmund or a similar level club and then dominate.”
There are plenty of examples of players who have done just that and then excelled. Mohamed Salah never was able to break through at Chelsea, but he rebuilt his confidence in Italy with Fiorentina and AS Roma, and then later returned to the Premier League with Liverpool and became a club legend.
The same was true for Kevin De Bruyne, who after his own struggles at Chelsea parleyed a stellar season with Bundesliga side Wolfsburg to later become the attacking hub of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City sides. Closer to USMNT circles, Luca de la Torre dropped down from Fulham in the Premier League to Heracles Almelo in the Eredivisie and showed enough quality to move to LaLiga with Celta Vigo where he garnered considerable playing time the past two seasons (though of late he’s struggled for minutes).
Reyna himself is showing more of a willingness to make such a move. He still feels the sting of the Forest adventure and realized the bright lights of the Premier League didn’t provide what he needed. A more practical move to the likes of Marseille or Sevilla — both of which were reportedly on the table — would have been better for his career. Bild reported on Tuesday that VfL Bochum inquired about a possible loan move earlier this summer, one that Reyna welcomed, only for Dortmund to scuttle the deal by demanding a full transfer instead.
Gonzalez added that he’s seen enough growth in Reyna’s game that he could excel as a team’s attacking centerpiece. He’s improved on the defensive side of the ball as well.
“I just see more balance in his game,” he said.
“I see him really kind of taking the reins when he wants to. When he’s in the attacking third or the attacking half, you can see he creates combination plays. He makes final passes. He drives at defenders. He’s doing that, I think, with better balance and awareness and decision-making and better responsibility.
“You see him working his butt off defensively. Whether he’s central, whether he is wide. I saw him defending in the box his last few games with the national team and doing it with a lot of focus and understanding that’s what the team needs to, to win, and you see a player that’s becoming more and more complete.”
Continuing that evolution requires getting on the field. The next three months will reveal whether that can happen with enough regularity in Dortmund. Otherwise, he’ll need to find a new situation when the European transfer window reopens in January. The hope is then he can get unstuck.