Giovanni Reyna's agent has described USA boss Gregg Berhalter's comments about one player not meeting expectations as 'disappointing and disrespectful'.
The Borussia Dortmund starlet endured a hugely frustrating World Cup, making just two substitute appearances for his country despite being tipped for a big role.
With the USA being eliminated in the last-16 by the Netherlands, their head coach conducted an interview in which he spoke about his temptation to send one underperforming player home from Qatar.
Berhalter told Charter Works: "Every day you come into the locker room and you're checking the scales to see where guys are at, to see what issues can arise.
"You always have to be ready to hit issues head-on, using your values as a filter. An example I can give you: In this last World Cup, we had a player that was clearly not meeting expectations on and off the field.
"One of 26 players, so it stood out. As a staff, we sat together for hours deliberating what we were going to do with this player.
"We were ready to book a plane ticket home, that's how extreme it was. And what it came down to was, we're going to have one more conversation with him, and part of the conversation was how we're going to behave from here out. There aren’t going to be any more infractions.
"But the other thing we said to him was, you're going to have to apologise to the group, but it's going to have to say why you’re apologising. It's going to have to go deeper than just ‘Guys, I'm sorry.’ And I prepped the leadership group with this.
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"I said, ‘Okay, this guy's going to apologise to you as a group, to the whole team.’ And what was fantastic in this whole thing is that after he apologised, they stood up one by one and said, ‘Listen, it hasn’t been good enough. You haven’t been meeting our expectations of a teammate and we want to see change.’
"They really took ownership of that process. And from that day on there were no issues with this player."
Speculation has been swirling regarding who the player in question is, leading to Reyna's agent, Dan Segal, hitting out at Berhalter's comments.
Speaking to The Athletic, Segal said: “Gio obviously did not have the experience anyone hoped for at the World Cup.
"The situation, relationships and interactions among parties are far more complicated than what has been reported.
"It is disappointing and disrespectful for certain parties to be commenting on private team matters publicly, especially when some do so without full knowledge of the facts and others do so in a self-serving manner.
"At this point, our view is that nothing more is gained by those associated with the national team turning on each other, and we plan no further comment on this matter.”
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