1) Never before have the pressures of playing for club and country been illustrated so clearly as when we see Reyna criss-crossing the Atlantic for World Cup qualifiers while trying to maintain his form (and dodgy health) for Glasgow Rangers and Sunderland.

2) American fans would then have a better chance to appreciate Reyna's considerable achievements in European soccer. It's easy to forget that he had a negative debut at Bayer Leverkusen, almost identical to Landon Donovan's. Yet Reyna stayed in Europe -- and eventually thrived.

3) Filmmaker Brian Weidling had extensive access, not just to Reyna but also to his former Glasgow Rangers teammates Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Tony Vidmar, several U.S. teammates and coach Bruce Arena, ex-Sunderland coach Peter Reid, and Reyna's high school coaches and family members. (Mother Lourdes is comfortable enough, even, to chide her son for not yet having earned his degree from Virginia: "We're still waiting...")

4) Reyna himself is particularly candid on a number of subjects, including CONCACAF refereeing, the differences in his roles for club and country, and his decision to stay in Europe early on in his career.

5) Though the production is a tad long -- we suspect a TV distributor might want to shorten it to 60 minutes -- American soccer nuts will be in heaven.

Weidling is a great story in his own right. A contemporary of Reyna's in New Jersey high school soccer during the late 1980s, Weidling lost a leg in a gruesome car wreck during his senior year. Remarkably, he came back to play (with a prosthesis) for Division III Emerson College before going into filmmaking. If Weidling's work on The Goal is an indication of what's to come in his career, we'll look forward to seeing his next project as well.

o Reports out of training in Bradenton, Fla., this week are that 13-year-old phenom Freddy Adu (in residency with the U.S. under-17 national team) was on the field during scrimmages against the senior squad. Though Adu didn't school anyone, I'm told, it's remarkable that someone his age wouldn't look out of place in that situation. Meanwhile, a source close to Adu tells me that his mother, Emelia, is scheduled to undergo her U.S. citizenship interview on Feb. 13. If she passes, young Freddy (a Ghana native who has lived in the U.S. for five years) will also gain his American passport -- and the chance to be cap-tied to the U.S. at next month's under-17 world championships qualifying tournament in Guatemala.

o In an exercise of pure time-wasting, SI's resident soccer fans have counted their caps -- the number of U.S. men's "full-internationals" we have attended in person. You'll be happy to know that, after making my debut on July 20, 1995 vs. Brazil in Maldonado, Uruguay, I'll be adding my 31st cap on Saturday. Paging media deans Jerry Trecker, Grahame Jones and Michael Lewis: How many caps do you guys have? (Answer to be found in next week's column.)

See you next week.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl keeps you up to date with the world of U.S. soccer each month at CNNSI.com. To send Wahl a comment, question or story idea, click here.

 

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