When the USA Males’s Nationwide Crew beat Guatemala to clinch its place within the 2025 Gold Cup remaining, 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 workforce all summer season, Luna is rapidly changing into the face of this new-look USMNT.
He’s proficient, dedicated, hungry and completely unpredictable when he takes the sphere. However Luna’s USMNT breakthrough didn’t occur beneath the brilliant lights of the Gold Cup. It occurred earlier this yr in the course of the oft-maligned, poorly understood annual U.S. Soccer camp, recognized relatively uncharitably as “Camp Cupcake.”
Camp Cupcake is one thing of a lightning rod inside the USMNT group. Based in 1997, it’s a set of friendlies that the workforce performs in January outdoors of conventional FIFA home windows. Camp Cupcake is unsanctioned, unofficial and completely unserious, however it does have a objective: to provide a platform to American gamers from Main League Soccer, lots 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.) Nevertheless, 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 proper aspect of historical past — and Diego Luna is a giant a part of why. Luna acquired his USMNT begin in 2025’s Camp Cupcake, enjoying by way of 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 workforce wouldn’t have Luna scoring two essential targets to ebook its place within the Gold Cup remaining. It won’t have Luna in any respect: the Sunnyvale, CA-born athlete was additionally eligible to play for Mexico and will have opted to hitch El Tri as a substitute.
“He’s enhancing, he’s getting expertise,” USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino said of Luna after his Guatemala brace. “How essential was January, no? We found a participant like him and gave him confidence.
“Individuals say [Camp Cupcake] is ineffective, however it’s not ineffective. It’s essential for the nationwide workforce, essential for the nation.”
Luna wasn’t the one USMNT Gold Cup common to interrupt by way of throughout Camp Cupcake 2025. Charlotte FC striker Patrick Agyemang made his first nationwide workforce appearances there too, and he’s began each single recreation of the USMNT’s Gold Cup run.
Agyemang’s pace, physicality and wonderful hold-up play throughout this match 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 severe conversations about the way in which we talk about 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 season because it navigates a match with none of its big-name stars.
