On the 8 AM Sunday SportsCenter, ESPN will premiere an SC Featured segment focusing on Borussia Dortmund starlet Gio Reyna, the son of former USMNT star Claudio Reyna. The 17-year old Reyna made 18 appearances for Dortmund in 2020, and will play a significant role in the team’s campaign in the upcoming season.
The segment (trailer here), featuring interviews with Reyna, his parents, current USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter, and Dortmund staffers, is an enlightening look at Reyna, his career to date, and his future goals, among other topics. But more than anything, the feature opened my eyes to how ESPN, through its relationships with a variety of European soccer leagues airing on ESPN+, can shine a spotlight on some budding USMNT talent playing abroad, who fans cannot see on a regular basis.
Under its previous deal with Fox, Germany’s Bundesliga was typically relegated to second-tier status, with matches usually airing on FS2 (if they were on cable at all). The network’s focus on embracing debate during the week also left little room for features outside of shoulder programming around live events, making a segment like the SC Featured on Reyna less of a priority (unless it was created by the Bundesliga and aired on a Bundesliga-produced magazine show leading into or out of a live match). And yes, most Bundesliga matches will be behind the ESPN+ paywall with the league’s new rights deal with ESPN, but the network’s commitment to storytelling on various platforms represents a way for ESPN to spotlight some of the up and coming USMNT talent playing abroad.
In addition to its deal with the Bundesliga, ESPN airs matches from Italy’s Serie A, the Dutch Eredivisie, and the English Championship. Many Americans who go abroad land in a European league, where they live on in YouTube highlights and deep in match reports scoured by fans. With ESPN airing some of these leagues, it seems academic to create features similar to the Reyna one, allowing fans to learn a whole lot more about potential USMNT stars that don’t play stateside.
Take for example, 19-year old Ulysses Llanez. He got his first USMNT cap (and goal) in February, a year after signing for Wolfsburg in Germany. And while he hasn’t broken through and made his first team debut with the squad, when (or if, for the sake of completeness) he does, it would be easy for ESPN to discuss him and shine a light on Wolfsburg during a SportsCenter or ESPNFC segment. And if Llanez’s star rises the way Reyna’s has, and Christian Pulisic’s did before that, the network would have a much easier time crafting a feature on him in advance of the next senior USMNT appearances.
Yes, not all players have stories with a similar hook as Reyna (budding star for a huge club, family pedigree), but it’s not as if every feature needs to be as in-depth and personal as Reyna’s. Guys like Josh Sargent (in Germany with Werder Bremen) and Weston McKennie (who just completed a loan to Italy’s Juventus) are familiar names to USMNT fans, but both are still young enough that each would be a compelling profile.
It’s not ESPN’s job to promote US Soccer. That isn’t what the Reyna feature was about, and that’s not what I’m suggesting ESPN do. But when given the opportunity to create compelling features and tell interesting stories through a partnership with a league, why not try to go to a different well instead of yet another feature on Dortmund’s Yellow Wall, or the controversial escalations of financing at Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig, or the fierceness of the Revierderby? The fans familiar with those topics are already watching the Bundesliga. By turning the spotlight to young Americans abroad, ESPN might be able to attract viewers who didn’t think they had any reason to care about the top flight leagues in Germany, Italy, or the Netherlands.The fe
The SC Featured segment on Giovanni Reyna airs on Sunday, September 6th during the 8 AM ET SportsCenter.
