With a Reyna, Berhalter in USMNT camp together, the past is being kept in the past – The Athletic
The Athletic has live coverage of the U.S. Men’s National Team vs. Paraguay in an international friendly.
CHESTER, Pa. — Field 1 at the WSFS Bank Sportsplex, plus a downtown Philadelphia hotel, were perhaps awkward settings for a potentially awkward reunion. There, on Monday, was Gio Reyna, back with the U.S. men’s national team for the first time since March. And there, exchanging passes with Reyna in a warmup drill, then briefly interacting with him, was Sebastian Berhalter.
Years ago, they were close, just as their dads and moms had been for decades. Claudio Reyna and Gregg Berhalter had grown from North Jersey kids into USMNT teammates. They married Danielle Reyna (née Egan) and Rosalind Berhalter (née Santana), respectively, also soccer players and roommates at the University of North Carolina. “The two families are practically family,” Sports Illustrated wrote in a 2020 profile of Gio, and Gio and Sebastian were “best friends.”
Then 2022 happened.
In 2022, Gregg coached Gio at the World Cup. Gio, upset by a lack of playing time, “let my emotions get the best of me,” he later admitted. He was nearly sent home for his misbehavior. A week after the USMNT’s elimination, when The Athletic reported (and Gregg inadvertently revealed) the drama to the world, Claudio and Danielle, Gio’s parents, texted and spoke with then-U.S. Soccer sporting director Earnie Stewart. On a call with Stewart, Danielle, angry at Gregg, divulged a 1992 incident in which Gregg, a college freshman, had assaulted Rosalind.
What followed was the ugliest, saddest American men’s soccer saga in years. U.S. Soccer commissioned an investigation and vowed to publish it. Gregg released a statement acknowledging the 1992 assault, in which he wrote that sharing “a story that belongs to us” — he and Rosalind — was “a difficult step to take.” Two days later, he said his “entire family” was “saddened” by the saga.
Gregg also told investigators that, prior to the World Cup, Rosalind and Danielle “had talked every day for decades.” But at the World Cup, their friendship “ended immediately.”
And Gio and Sebastian — who once had “a Snapchat streak; I talk to him every day,” Gio told SI in 2020 — presumably stopped communicating. Sebastian was in Qatar as a fan. He became a witness to the fallout. In an April 2025 interview with The Athletic, he said the saga “definitely brought our family closer together.” It was “cool,” he said, “to see everyone have each other’s backs.” When asked if he and Gio had spoken about the saga, or if their relationship was in a better place, Sebastian said: “No.”
So, it was inescapable as USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino put together this November roster. “I hear something,” he said Friday when asked whether he was aware of the family history when he named both Gio and Sebastian to his November roster.
“But for me, it’s not important,” Pochettino continued. The most important thing, he said, “is the national team. And if we believe that Sebastian and Gio are important for us — and, because I think these two guys are really intelligent and very clever — if something happen, for sure, they are mature enough to deal with that.”
And “from Day 1” of this week’s training camp, Pochettino said, he saw Sebastian and Gio being “good teammates. [Their interactions] and the communication is fantastic in between both, in the way that they say hello, and hug. That is not a problem.”
U.S. defender Tim Ream, when asked about Gio and Seb and their families’ history, said he “actually completely forgot about it until the third or fourth day. And I was like, ‘Oh, wait a minute.’ But no, it’s not really been discussed amongst the team.”
Pochettino added: “Only what can happen is to build a relationship again — if they want. I don’t know if that happen or not, but it’s all that I hear, from you or from media.”
Previously, when Gregg was re-hired as U.S. head coach in 2023, he consulted mediation experts before re-connecting with Gio for the first time in nine months. When Gio, after battling injuries, did return to camp in October of 2023, both he and Gregg spoke about moving on from the familial feud. After Gio starred in the 2024 Concacaf Nations League finals, he said that “both of us are so far past it.”
“If we didn’t put it in the past, it would’ve been affecting the team,” Reyna added. “And I think that was most important for the both of us.”
Mauricio Pochettino directs USMNT training before a friendly vs. Paraguay (John Dorton / ISI Photos / USSF / Getty Images)
It’s unclear if Gio and Seb have had similarly intentional conversations about moving on. Neither Seb nor Gio was made available by U.S. Soccer for interviews this week. When they were named to the roster, there were no cute notes in U.S. Soccer’s release about how the sons of USMNT teammates had become USMNT teammates themselves. There is an apparent desire on all sides to make this a non-issue — because that’s what it has to be if either or both are going to compete for a spot at the 2026 World Cup.
So there they were, side by side in rondos on Thursday, training together alongside 22 others. It’s not as if they sat together on the team bus or warmed up together in the weight room. But, Ream said, “their relationship has looked pretty normal to me and to everybody else.”
“What happened happened, and we’ve all kinda moved on from it,” Ream continued. “And I think they have as well. And I think that’s a good thing. Everyone’s trying to make this team. Everybody’s trying to be part of a home World Cup. And those two guys are no different than myself, than Chris [Richards], than Tanner [Tessmann], than everybody, up and down the group.”
Ream and striker Folarin Balogun both said that Reyna seems “focused” — “more focused on the field than I’ve seen in the past,” Ream noted.
Balogun said: “He seems like he wants to put the injuries and the noise behind him, and just play, and do what he does best.”
