When the USA Males’s Nationwide Staff beat Guatemala to clinch its place within the 2025 Gold Cup ultimate, 21-year-old Real Salt Lake attacker Diego Luna was the person who made it occur.
His bravura two-goal efficiency wound up being the distinction between the 2 groups.
With stars like Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah absent from the senior staff all summer time, Luna is shortly turning into the face of this new-look USMNT.
He’s proficient, dedicated, hungry and totally unpredictable when he takes the sphere. However Luna’s USMNT breakthrough didn’t occur beneath the intense lights of the Gold Cup. It occurred earlier this 12 months throughout the oft-maligned, poorly understood annual U.S. Soccer camp, identified fairly uncharitably as “Camp Cupcake.”
Camp Cupcake is one thing of a lightning rod throughout the USMNT group. Based in 1997, it’s a set of friendlies that the staff performs in January outdoors of conventional FIFA home windows. Camp Cupcake is unsanctioned, unofficial and totally unserious, nevertheless it does have a function: to present a platform to American gamers from Main League Soccer, a lot of whom are missed for USMNT positions in favor of their Europe-based counterparts.
The American soccer group is split about these January video games. Many followers discover these video games foolish, pointless and much too childlike to be useful (therefore the only-sort-of-kidding Camp Cupcake nickname.) Nonetheless, some, particularly those that have been concerned within the sport for some time, suppose otherwise. They see actual worth in giving MLS gamers an opportunity to show themselves and earn a spot within the USMNT roster.
Because the 2025 Gold Cup attracts to an in depth, it’s the latter camp that appears prefer it’s on the fitting facet of historical past — and Diego Luna is a giant a part of why. Luna received his USMNT begin in 2025’s Camp Cupcake, enjoying by a damaged nostril to assist the USMNT beat Costa Rica 3-0.
If the USMNT hadn’t performed these foolish, pointless, childlike Camp Cupcake matches again in January, the staff wouldn’t have Luna scoring two essential targets to guide its place within the Gold Cup ultimate. It may not have Luna in any respect: the Sunnyvale, CA-born athlete was additionally eligible to play for Mexico and will have opted to affix El Tri as a substitute.
“He’s bettering, he’s getting expertise,” USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino said of Luna after his Guatemala brace. “How vital was January, no? We found a participant like him and gave him confidence.
“Folks say [Camp Cupcake] is ineffective, nevertheless it’s not ineffective. It’s vital for the nationwide staff, essential for the nation.”
Luna wasn’t the one USMNT Gold Cup common to interrupt by throughout Camp Cupcake 2025. Charlotte FC striker Patrick Agyemang made his first nationwide staff appearances there too, and he’s began each single recreation of the USMNT’s Gold Cup run.
Agyemang’s velocity, physicality and wonderful hold-up play throughout this event have earned him curiosity from prime English golf equipment, with both Ipswich Town and Derby County in talks to sign him before the summer transfer window closes.
The evolution of Luna, Agyemang and Ream ought to begin critical conversations about the best way we focus on Camp Cupcake throughout the U.S. Soccer panorama.
Sure, its video games are sometimes juvenile and frivolous, however Camp Cupcake has been the distinction between delight and catastrophe for the USMNT this summer time because it navigates a event with none of its big-name stars.
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