When america Males’s Nationwide Workforce beat Guatemala to clinch its place within the 2025 Gold Cup closing, 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 crew all summer time, Luna is rapidly turning 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 intense lights of the Gold Cup. It occurred earlier this 12 months throughout the oft-maligned, poorly understood annual U.S. Soccer camp, recognized 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 crew performs in January outdoors of conventional FIFA home windows. Camp Cupcake is unsanctioned, unofficial and completely unserious, but it surely 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, assume 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 a detailed, it’s the latter camp that appears prefer it’s on the appropriate facet of historical past — and Diego Luna is an enormous 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 crew wouldn’t have Luna scoring two essential objectives to e-book its place within the Gold Cup closing. 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 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, but it surely’s not ineffective. It’s vital for the nationwide crew, 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 crew appearances there too, and he’s began each single sport of the USMNT’s Gold Cup run.
Agyemang’s pace, physicality and glorious 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 time because it navigates a match with none of its big-name stars.
