Why Gio Reyna, Ricardo Pepi, other young U.S. stars flock to Germany
By Doug McIntyre
FOX Sports Soccer Writer
Long before a barely 17-year-old Christian Pulisic started scoring goals for Bundesliga power Borussia Dortmund in early 2016, Germany’s top league was the preferred jumping off point for young American soccer players.
Landon Donovan began his professional career there. So did fellow USMNT greats Claudio Reyna, Steve Cherundolo and others.
But Pulisic’s instant success as a teenager in one of the world’s top five leagues was different. In fact, it was unprecedented. His first strike made him the youngest non-German ever to score in the Bundesliga. His second made him the youngest of any nationality to notch two goals. Those distinctions raised eyebrows not just in the U.S. but also in England and beyond.
Jadon Sancho certainly took notice. One of the English game’s most prized youngsters, Sancho left Manchester City and joined Dortmund in 2017, after the Premier League champions couldn’t guarantee him playing time.
He went on to make 104 top-flight appearances for the Black and Yellow before Manchester United brought him back to the Prem last summer for almost $100 million, or about $25 million more than the transfer fee Chelsea paid for Pulisic two years earlier.
"Obviously, Christian Pulisic played a role," BVB’s Giovanni Reyna, Claudio’s son, said last week when asked by FOX Sports why he chose to sign his first pro contract in Germany. "Everyone saw what he was doing here as a young player."
At age 19, Reyna is already in his third season with Dortmund’s senior squad, and he’s teammates with another English blue-chipper in 18-year-old Jude Bellingham, plus 21-year-old Erling Haaland, who is universally regarded as one of the brightest talents in the global game. Compared to other rising stars, the three are grizzled vets.
Since Reyna, Bellingham and Haaland made their Bundesliga debuts two seasons ago, a slew of new up-and-comers have arrived in Germany. Joe Scally, like Reyna a product of NYCFC's academy, has been a regular with Borussia Mönchengladbach this season. Just since Jan. 1, three more Americans — George Bello (Arminia Bielefeld), Kevin Paredes (Wolfsburg) and Ricardo Pepi (Augsburg) — have left MLS teams for Germany.
"In America, every single player wants to come play in the Bundesliga," Pepi, who sought the advice of USMNT teammates Pulisic, Reyna and Weston McKennie before making the leap, said last week during a Zoom call with international journalists. "I wouldn’t say it’s a steppingstone."
Still, there’s no way Pulisic would’ve cracked Chelsea’s veteran-laden first team at 17. McKennie, who has emerged as a bona fide star in his second season with Italian titan Juventus, wouldn’t have gone from the FC Dallas academy to Juve’s starting lineup without his four-year stopover at Schalke.
"It’s a great place for younger players to learn," Cherundolo, who spent 16 years as a player and five more as a coach in Germany, told FOX Sports. "German coaches in general are very good at teaching the nuances of the game, and younger players will thrive in environments like that because there’s a framework for them to move within. There’s room for creativity, but there’s also structure. That’s what younger players need."
There are other factors, too. Immigration laws are a big part of the reason Germany has become the destination for the sport’s most gifted and ambitious prospects. Not only is the Premier League currently the strongest in Europe, but it’s also the hardest to gain entry to for foreigners, who generally must already be mainstays for their national teams to qualify for the U.K. work permit required to sign for an English club.
The top leagues in France, Italy, Spain and even the Netherlands also have stiffer restrictions on signing players from outside the European Union than Germany does. And despite the language barrier, there might be less culture shock off the field for U.S. and British players in Germany than in other European countries, where fewer people are bilingual.
German clubs have also shown a unique willingness to give inexperienced players valuable playing time in high-stakes, high-quality games. That trust, for the most part, has paid off.
"Here in the Bundesliga, if you make a mistake, it’s not gonna wreck your career. You’ll get another chance," said Scally, who added that ‘Gladbach outlined its plan for him in detail early on and that "Everything they said basically came true."
No club has benefited from giving experience to youngsters more than Dortmund, which has in turn provided the blueprint for much of the rest of the Bundesliga. While Real Madrid, Chelsea, the two Manchester giants and German champ Bayern Munich all have the financial resources to buy finished products for vast sums, BVB has earned a reputation as perhaps the planet’s best incubator of raw potential.
It’s one of the reasons Haaland chose Dortmund over some of those very suitors when he left Austria’s FC Salzburg in early 2020. Since then, he has scored 71 goals in 70 Bundesliga and Champions League appearances. Dortmund, which paid just $22 million for the Norwegian striker, is expected to sell his contract for up to eight times that amount this summer.
"Some of the young talent won’t make a career like Christian Pulisic and Gio, but I think for the players and their families, it’s important to see that this club is not only promising things, but it’s fulfilling the promises," said Carsten Cramer, Dortmund’s managing director. "It’s part of our DNA that we definitely won’t be able to hire the big stars but that we will educate the young stars — that we will build stars."
Wherever they come from.
One of the most prominent soccer journalists in North America, Doug McIntyre has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams in more than a dozen countries, including multiple FIFA World Cups. Before joining FOX Sports, the New York City native was a staff writer for Yahoo Sports and ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.
