A playmaking midfielder who was a mainstay of the U.S. national team for more than a decade, while also starring for first-division clubs in Europe for most of his career.
Reyna, who sometimes played forward, was particularly valued for the perfect passes from midfield and the wings with which he set up scoring opportunities for teammates.
Reyna played 112 full internationals for the United States between 1994 and 2006. Those 112 games included 31 World Cup qualifiers in 1996, 1997, 2000 , 2001, 2004 and 2005, and 10 games at the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cups. He also was a member of the United States team at the 1994 World Cup, but did not play due to injury.
Reyna was the regular captain of the U.S. national team from 2000 through 2006, with his most famous game in that role perhaps being the victory over Mexico in the 2002 World Cup.
Reyna was pegged for stardom early, and played for the United States in the 1992 Olympics when he was only 19 and still at the University of Virginia. He was offered a contract by Barcelona after those Olympics, but didn’t turn pro for another year, when he signed a U.S. national team contract. He then moved to Bayer Leverkusen in Germany after the 1994 World Cup, but didn’t get much playing time there. His club career began to blossom after a move to a lesser team, Wolfsburg, in 1997. During his European club career, he played five seasons in the German first division, three seasons at Rangers in the Scottish Premier League and six seasons at Sunderland and Manchester City in the English Premier League. At Wolfsburg in 1998 he became the first American to captain a European first-division team. He was one of the first Americans to win a European first-division title when he was a star of Rangers’ Scottish Premier League champion teams in 1999 and 2000.
Reyna finished his career with two seasons in MLS for New York, appearing in 27 MLS regular-season games and two MLS playoff games.
Inducted in 2012.
