Gio Reyna is headed to Nottingham Forest for the rest of the English Premier League season, according to multiple reports in Europe on Wednesday.
The U.S. men’s national team midfielder will join relegation-threatened Forest on a six-month loan from German side Borussia Dortmund, for whom the 21-year-old hardly played during the first half of the 2023-24 Bundesliga campaign. Fabrizio Romano, soccer’s preeminent transactions reporter, said that Forest will cover Reyna’s salary until the summer. It’s unclear if the deal includes a purchase option.
Reyna, who flew to England on Wednesday ahead of his medical exam, joins USMNT keepers Matt Turner and Ethan Horvath at Forest. But it’s still a curious destination for the attacker, who also reportedly drew interest from top flight teams in France, Portugal and Spain.
Reyna has struggled to stay healthy throughout his five years at Dortmund. He has played more than 45 minutes in a match just once since June. The Premier League is a huge step-up in pace and physicality from any of Europe’s other top four leagues, and adjusting midseason is especially difficult. U.S. stalwart Weston McKennie, who spent the second half of last season with Leeds United on loan from Italian titan Juventus, struggled mightily despite his previous experience in both the Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League. McKennie returned to Juve and has been among the best midfielders in Serie A this season, further underscoring how much more difficult the Prem has become compared to its closest competitors. Leeds was relegated to the second tier at the end of 2022-23.
Forest is in danger of suffering a similar fate. Following Tuesday’s 2-1 home defeat against Arsenal, the club sits just two points clear of the drop. They don’t exactly play the free-flowing game that best suits Reyna’s style, either; the Reds had just 26-percent of possession in the loss to the Gunners. And while manager Nuno Espírito Santo pushed hard to sign Reyna, per Romano, it’s hard to see how the American could possibly be match-fit enough to be an immediate starter at the City Ground, or how Espírito Santo can afford to give Reyna time to fully acclimate if he can’t at least be an impact substitute from the jump.
But Reyna was clearly determined to move somewhere this window, having recently hired one of the top agents in global soccer in longtime Cristiano Ronaldo rep Jorge Mendes. Dortmund, for it’s part, would’ve liked Reyna to stay. On Sunday, Black & Yellow coach Edin Terzic seemed to hint that that was still a possibility.
“I expect him to be available to me on Friday,” Terzic said of Reyna, referring to the day after the Feb. 1 transfer deadline.”
Instead, Reyna has the change of scenery he desired, even if success at Forest is anything but assured.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer writer for FOX Sports. Before joining FOX Sports in 2021, he was a staff writer with ESPN and Yahoo Sports and he has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at multiple FIFA World Cups. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.
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