Captain Claudio: We're still playing catch-up

He is better known in Sunderland than he is back in the States. Simon Turnbull meets a man with a mission

The footballer who leads the United States on their World Cup mission happens to hail from Springfield. "That's Springfield, New Jersey," Claudio Reyna says, stressing the difference between his home town and the Springfield that gave the world Bartholomew J Simpson. "No, it's not like Bart Simpson's Springfield at all," the laughing midfielder adds. "It's a common name. I think there's a Springfield in every state in America. It's just your normal middle-to-upper-class American town."

It's not a bit like the New Jersey of The Sopranos, either, Reyna hastens to point out. "That's more north-east New Jersey," he says. "But there are areas up there. I had friends who grew up in that kind of environment."

With visions of Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes, the matter rests there. Reyna is not in the north-east of New Jersey but in the North-east of England. Folk in this part of the world have been known to fall asleep with the fishes – and with the chips still on their laps, too. It is Reyna's role as Captain America, though, that is the principal topic of the conversation.

It is a curiously understated role. Mention Reyna's name in any bar from Seattle to Miami and the punters would shrug their shoulders in ignorance – and yet he is about to lead the United States into a sporting spectacle that is second only to the Olympic Games in terms of global prestige and interest.

The trouble is, of course, there isn't much interest in the beautiful game in the United States – in the beautiful men's game, at any rate. Mention Mia Hamm and the bar-room reaction would probably be different. The star of the successful US women's soccer team – winners of the 1996 Olympics and 1999 women's World Cup on home soil – even features in the British movie Bend It Like Beckham. Reyna knows her well. His wife, Danielle Egan, is a former US women's international. "Yeah, Mia is very popular," he says. "In America, image goes a long way and she got a lot of press with the team that won the women's World Cup. We have some great marketing agencies in America and they have done wonders for her."

Perhaps it would be the same for Reyna if he had helped the US men's team win the 1994 men's World Cup or the 1996 Olympic tournament on home ground. As it is, he knows the sporting public back home has no appreciation of the size of the task facing him and his colleagues in the Far East – even just in their opening game, against Portugal in Suwon on 5 June. "They have no idea," Reyna says. "They just see Portugal and say, 'Well, we beat 'em in everything else. Why can't we beat 'em in soccer?' They don't know it's the sport in which we're really playing catch-up with the rest of the world. We've done a lot of catching up. We were unlucky to lose in Italy in February. But there are some great international sides and Portugal are one of them."

Portugal also happens to be the land where the mother of the soccer-playing Captain America was born. Not that Maria Reyna will have any divided World Cup loyalties – or Miguel Reyna, for that matter. Reyna's father is from Argentina. He played as a forward for Independiente before moving to New Jersey to work as a pilot. "Like any dad in the US, he wanted to teach his kid a sport," Claudio recalls, "and soccer was the only one he could teach me." He has done a good job, too. At the age of 28, Reyna junior has won 88 caps for his country. He has appeared in two Olympic Games and one World Cup, played in the Bundesliga for Bayer Leverkusen and Vfl Wolfsburg, won two Scottish titles with Rangers and maintained his rock-steady midfield form through six months of struggle with Sunderland in the Premiership.

At £4.5 million, the Springfield boy is also the most expensive American soccer player of all time – and raring to show his worth against the £40m Luis Figo and the rest of the big, wide football world.