When the US Males’s Nationwide Group 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 season, Luna is rapidly turning into the face of this new-look USMNT.
He’s proficient, dedicated, hungry and totally unpredictable when he takes the sector. However Luna’s USMNT breakthrough didn’t occur below the brilliant lights of the Gold Cup. It occurred earlier this 12 months through the oft-maligned, poorly understood annual U.S. Soccer camp, identified somewhat 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 staff performs in January outdoors of conventional FIFA home windows. Camp Cupcake is unsanctioned, unofficial and totally unserious, however it does have a goal: to provide a platform to American gamers from Main League Soccer, lots of whom are ignored 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 proper aspect of historical past — and Diego Luna is an enormous a part of why. Luna obtained his USMNT begin in 2025’s Camp Cupcake, enjoying by means 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 staff wouldn’t have Luna scoring two essential targets to e-book 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 an alternative.
“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, however 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 means of throughout Camp Cupcake 2025. Charlotte FC striker Patrick Agyemang made his first nationwide staff appearances there too, and he’s began each single sport of the USMNT’s Gold Cup run.
Agyemang’s velocity, 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 critical 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.
