ORANGEBURG, N.Y. — Don’t get Claudio Reyna wrong. The New York City FC sporting director is thrilled the World Cup will be played on American soil in 2026, but his concern, especially when it comes to the US national team, is on the here and now rather than eight years in the future.
“It’s exciting. Certainly everyone has something to look forward to,” Reyna said after NYCFC’s training session Friday morning. “Again it doesn’t change, whether we got it or not, that we have to get work and change quite a bit and improve because the standard isn’t good enough.”
A step in the right direction, Reyna said, is the appointment of Earnie Stewart to the newly appointed role of general manager of the USMNT. He’s quick to point out that Stewart isn’t the magic tonic to cure all the problems, however.
No one person is.
“I think it’s good. Earnie has a lot of experience. Hopefully soon he can kind of put his stamp on it, but again it’s one person,” Reyna said. “Whenever I read one person or one coach or one player is going to change everything, again it’s not the reality.”
Stewart, according to Reyna, brings “strong leadership, an energy and a level of respect” to a position that Reyna believes is a vital conduit between the executive side of U.S. Soccer and the players.
“Having this bridge is important,” Reyna said. “I think the players will really appreciate it, someone with Earnie’s pedigree there. I look forward to it.”
The job’s responsibilities have been a major talking point among fans and pundits. For Reyna, it should go well beyond just hiring and firing the USMNT coach. In addition to the coaching staff, according to US Soccer, Stewart is tasked with "high performance, analytics and team administration."
“I think really it should be focused on the technical side, on the field, how we train, how we play, how we pick our players, the system of play together with the coach is very important,” Reyna said. “Given our talent pool and the player profile we have right now, what is our team going to look like?”
That identity is something Reyna said has been missing, especially from a failed qualification bid for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
“That’s been the disappointment and frustration with soccer fans, is that from game to game over the last many years you just didn’t know what team, what system, what formation was going to show up,” Reyna said. “I think that’s what we’re all starving for because the national team does lead a lot of the teams underneath it, even some of the club teams if they see a direction for the national team would be really good.”
And while he’s sure Stewart will have to do some consulting when it comes to hiring a coach (US Soccer's chief sport development officer Nico Romeijn will assist on the overall technical development), citing the likelihood of different salary demands for different coaches, Reyna is sure that responsibility should fall on Stewart’s shoulders.
“I’d imagine he’s going to have to run it through some other people, but as far who is the person and the type of coach, it absolutely should be the GM,” Reyna said. “But then after that there’s of course legal contracts, how much can they spend to do it. Absolutely he should have the main responsibility of hiring the coach and of course firing him as well.”
As for the talent pool, especially the young players who have been selected by interim coach Dave Sarachan over the past several months, Reyna likes what he sees and the hiring of Stewart is a positive step forward toward respectability — from within Concacaf and beyond.
“I do think we have a good young base of players coming through and the team certainly can be exciting. We obviously need to hire a coach, but we certainly need to kind of quickly gain the creditability that we lost in our region and around the world,” Reyna said. “We have to think more today how we get better. I think Earnie is a really good first step.”
