The 2026 FIFA World Cup is less than five weeks away.
On June 11, Mexico and South Africa will open the tournament at Mexico City’s legendary Azteca Stadium. The next day, the U.S. Men’s National Team will start its own World Cup journey against Paraguay at Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium.
The USMNT hasn’t named its official World Cup squad — that roster is expected to drop May 26 — and that means everyone, from top players to fringe candidates, is battling to be a part of the historic team.
Here are the players who did the most to help — or hurt — their cases over the past week of club soccer:
Gio Reyna, Borussia Monchengladbach
Reyna is a divisive figure within the USMNT fan base. For some, he’s the most talented player of the bunch and a surefire lock for the World Cup roster regardless of how he’s performing elsewhere; for others, he’s a known troublemaker whose 487 minutes of professional play this season hardly warrant a call-up.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Reyna is breathtakingly talented, and he’s grown a lot since his meltdown at the last World Cup, but he isn’t getting the reps he needs to prove himself for this one.
That might be changing at the last second. Reyna played nearly 40 minutes in Borussia Monchengladbach’s 3-1 loss to Augsburg on Saturday — a longer stint than he’s managed in ages — and scored his first Monchengladbach goal. For most players, a record like that wouldn’t be enough to get them on the World Cup squad. But for someone with as much ceiling-raising potential as Reyna, this just might do the trick.