For a federation that governs over 12 million participants across a vast expanse of land, US Soccer is a very small team. Although the country’s governing body for the sport currently has more than 100 officials, it has been dominated for decades by a small elite.
You have a long way to go to find a coach in the men’s national team who hasn’t strayed from the same coaching tree – with the notable exception of Jurgen Klinsmann. Bob Bradley (2007-11), Dave Sarachan (2017-18) and Gregg Berhalter (2018-present?) Berhalter has also played Arena in the USMNT. Arena, in turn, was guided by Manny Schellscheidt (1975), as well as several other national team managers. They all come from New Jersey or New York.
Key executives and high-ranking officials of the United States Soccer Federation tend to stick around for most of their careers. One president often begets another. In 2020, when then-President Carlos Cordeiro – the former left-hand man of former President Sunil Gulati, himself a protégé of former President Alan Rothenberg – was forced to resign, the new president, Cindy Parlow Cone, was considered a reformer. However, the position she was elevated from was that of vice president of the federation. Prior to that, the long-time women’s national team player served on five different U.S. soccer committees. Even the outsiders are insiders.
“They sound like recycled names,” says Herculez Gomez, a former men’s national team player and an ESPN analyst. “It feels centralized. And that’s not good, when something is so monopolized. US Soccer needs to be open to new ideas, different perspectives.”
A small group of people run the placemat, passing it on from parents to children, from mentors to mentees. But now, two prominent American football families are embroiled in a seething mix of conflicting interests and betrayals so scandalous that not even the BBC could resist doing it. a four-minute segment about the drama across the pond. The rivalry pits current national coach Berhalter against one of the biggest names in American football, Claudio Reyna, who is also the father of perhaps the most promising American talent of all time.
If you somehow missed Reyna’s confusion, or just can’t figure it out, here’s a brief explanation: star player Gio Reyna didn’t play much at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, watching from the bench as minor players entered the field and the tired did not go out. There was speculation about an injury, which Reyna himself dispelled after the opening game against Wales. A few days after the United States exited the tournament, Berhalter gave a confidential talk at a conference and said a story about a player who was almost expelled from Qatar for lack of effort in training. His statements were leaked. Inevitably, the name was reported: Gio Reyna. reyna confirmed the news on Instagram and explained that he was “devastated” to learn that his role in the World Cup would be limited. A young player had a petulant fit. Happens all the time. We thought the story was over. Was not.
Last Tuesday, Berhalter posted a long message on an unverified Twitter account with only a few dozen followers at the time. “During the World Cup, an individual contacted US Soccer saying they had information about me that would ‘bring me down’ – an apparent effort to leverage something very personal from a long time ago to end my relationship with US Soccer. . He wrote. Then he confessed to a domestic violence incident between him and his now-wife Rosalind in 1991 when he was 18 and they were both football players at the University of North Carolina. During a drunken night, Berhalter said, he kicked Rosalind in the legs during an argument. In a separate statement, published minutes after Berhalter’s tweet, US Soccer said it had hired a law firm to launch an investigation and later announced that Berhalter, whose contract with the federation expired on Dec. ongoing speculation would not lead the team at their annual January camp – an assistant of his would.
Then things really changed. The next day, ESPN reported that Danielle Reyna, Rosalind’s UNC teammate and best friend who witnessed the incident, and who is Gio’s mother, was the one who made the blackmail threats to the federation. Danielle’s husband, Claudio, was Berhalter’s childhood friend and longtime teammate. Claudio is a member of the National Football Hall of Fame and former youth technical director of the federation. None of that, however, stopped him from Also sending numerous complaints via text message to members of US Soccer, including technical director Earnie Stewart and general manager of the men’s national team Brian McBride – both former teammates of Claudio and Berhalter. The Reynas confirmed for the athletic that they had contacted the organization but still defended their intent. “I’ve known Earnie for years and consider him a close friend,” said Danielle. “I wanted him to know that I was absolutely outraged and devastated that Gio had been put in such a terrible position and that I felt personally betrayed by the actions of someone my family has considered a friend for decades. As part of that conversation, I told Earnie that I thought it especially unfair that Gio, who had apologized for acting so immaturely about his playing time, was still being dragged through the mud when Gregg asked for and received forgiveness for doing something so wrong. worse at the same age.”
EW. Gross. All of it.
That kind of thing can only happen when entire families are intertwined over generations. Now, at least, football’s near-term future is in the crossfire.
This is all very normal in American football. Anyone who’s somebody in the domestic game has known everybody who’s somebody for decades. Everyone sticks around forever. Nobody leaves. Namely, senior Reyna and Berhalter played youth football together coached by Reyna’s father Miguel. They studied together at St. G. Gordon Liddy). Perhaps it’s because the school is in New Jersey, which has produced an extremely disproportionate number of national team players – six members of the National Football Hall of Fame issued by little Kearny alone (population 40,000). But that still doesn’t count for Claudio being the best man when Berhalter married Rosalind. The college incident was forgiven and the families became close. The Berhalters’ son Sebastian played for Austin FC, where Claudio is the sporting director and Berhalter’s former assistant Josh Wolff is the head coach; Gio Reyna, of course, played, or possibly still plays, for Berhalter.
No use scribbling a blame scoreboard here. But the whole sorry episode is instructive, for it reveals incest in football. What’s more interesting right now is figuring out where the federation will go from here. How does it come back from this?
Gio is perhaps the most talented player on the men’s team – possibly of all time, and yes, even more so than Christian Pulisic. And at the World Cup, several senior federation officials I spoke to were highly complimentary of Berhalter’s work as head coach of the national team. Speaking at yet another conference, Berhalter said that he hopes to get back to work. So what, or who, is going to give?
It has been pointed that it would be hard to imagine US Soccer going so far as to commission an internal investigation, heaping even more attention and scorn over an ugly incident that it would sooner forget, had it had no intention of keeping Berhalter. It follows that, if the federation were inclined to let Berhalter go, the whole sordid ordeal would provide the perfect cover to drop him despite his competent World Cup performance. Conducting a thorough investigation and finding some credible solution, on the other hand, might erect a permission structure to bring Berhalter back, as long as no more dirt is unearthed. (Danielle Reyna dumped another barrel of fuel on the fire, claiming that Berhalter’s confession “significantly downplayed[d] the abuse on the night in question” in his statement to the athletic.) On the other hand, US Soccer may be nervous after years of poor public relations over its equal pay fight with the women’s national team and its omission when NWSL players reported widespread abuse.
“I fully believe that [Berhalter] he was on his way to being re-hired for a second term,” says Gomez. “It comes out and now I don’t know how US Soccer got back to Gregg Berhalter. The last thing the US Soccer Federation ever wanted is this. They have spent the last half decade in legal battles with players. if [Berhalter] were to come back, the uproar of a sector of fans and sponsors, I just don’t think it’s a headache that US Soccer wants.”
Maybe not. After Zinedine Zidane, twice coach of Real Madrid, allegedly refused the work of the USA, the federation may well pass on to some other member of the fraternity, some other branch of the tree. But chances are, one way or another, the Berhalters and the Reynas will have to find a way to get along again. Because none of them are likely to disappear.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a regular football contributor to the bell. He’s writing a book about the US men’s national team. He teaches at Colégio Marista.
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