'Why so serious?' - Diego Luna is the USMNT's most entertaining rising star, and the Real Salt Lake midfielder isn't changing for anyone

Each of Luna's tattoos tell a story, and they're all deeply personal. There's one on his forearm of a little boy kicking a ball wearing the No. 15, his family's favorite number. There's one on the opposite side of a soccer ball with a crown, which he got to commemorate his status as a professional player. On his neck, there's a large depiction of Jesus. Luna wanted to express his faith, so why not put it front and center where everyone can see it?

There's that Joker one, too. Countless pieces of artwork and, for Luna, countless hours under the needle.

"When they say tattoos don't hurt, they're lying," Luna says. "It hurts, no matter where, no matter how small, no matter what place on your body, they all hurt."

Painful, yes, with a purpose. He decided when he was younger that he had two goals: to get a lot of tattoos and to be a professional soccer player. The first goal would lean into the second. The second would help inspire the first. In some ways, they worked in tandem. By committing to the tattoos, Luna knew he was putting himself under a microscope, fairly or unfairly. You won't find many executives at Fortune 500 companies with neck tattoos, but, then again, Luna never dreamed of working for a Fortune 500 company.

"I knew early on that I was not good at school," he says. "I was never good at being in the books and all that stuff. I knew that I needed to go play soccer. I needed to do that because there was nothing else that I ever wanted to do. Playing soccer, they don't care about your appearance. You can look and be whoever you are as long as you play well."

A big gamble but, in some ways, a calculated one. Luna grew up around the game. His father coached, as did his older brothers and, from an early age, Luna found himself running in their circles. He'd just practice all day, and in doing so, Luna realized he could do things that those around him couldn't. As a youth player, onlookers would ask about the pass he made or the dribble he just pulled off. They'd ask him to explain how he did it. He couldn't. It was something natural, something that only he understood.

"I realized this when I was younger, playing in the academy and stuff, I'd have no idea what I did," he says. "My body was just doing it. My mind was telling my body what to do, and it was just working. I guess it's just a mixture of being around the soccer ball for so many years, but also maybe something that I'm born with, or something that was in my blood or something. I think for me, it was always just that I'm out there and I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know I'm having fun."

Somehow, that ability to have fun has continued on. At a certain point, it's often coached out of players. They're taught to make the right play, not the fun one. Somehow, though, Luna often finds ways to do both.

Luna's breakout has been coming, and the road has been as wild as Luna's game. He came up through the San Jose Earthquake system, moved to Barcelona's Arizona academy, signed with El Paso Locomotive in the USL Championship and, finally, was bought by RSL in 2022 for a USL-record fee of $250,000. He'd showed signs during his first two seasons in MLS. This past season, those signs became too prolific to ignore.

He was named an MLS All-Star in the summer and as named MLS Young Player of the Year in November. By the end of the season, he'd amassed 20 goal contributions in MLS, making him the second player in league history to hit that total before turning 21. Luna wasn't just enjoying himself on the field; he was making things happen in a tangible way.

Funnily enough, the only person with anything bad to say about Luna's 2024 is the man himself. He went from young player to All-Star throughout the season. Yet he's not satisfied.

"A lot of people outside or in the media, they made this year seem like an amazing year for me, and that I was unreal," he says. "There's so much more than I can do. I believe that this was average for myself. This is the baseline. I think that I should be scoring 10 goals a season easily. That's the type of standard that I have for myself.

"I need to be better this year, and there were a lot of moments where I could have been better, and that's what I'm striving for. That's the type of mentality that I have, because it's not good enough. I always want more. I always want more goals, more assists."

That mentality, Luna says, is the most important part of his rise. Yes, the skill with his feet has been helpful, but more important is the confidence in his feet to do those things. That starts in real life, not on the field. Luna works hard on getting the real life part right, perhaps even harder than he does at finding those highlight-reel goals and assists.

It's why, upon moving to RSL, he got a job at a Dutch Bros coffeeshop to work on his people skills. Luna wanted to get better at talking to people. It's made him more comfortable expressing himself in interviews. A little while back, Luna also started going to therapy, where he is so often reminded that he's a grown man playing a kids game. Yes, there's pressure, much of it internal pressure, but you feel it a bit less when you straddle that line between extreme humility and supreme confidence.

"As a man, in a stereotypical way, to admit that you need help mentally, I think that's hard for some people to admit as a man, because for many years it's implemented in your brains that you just put your head down," he says. "There are famous people or people you look up to getting help and having mental coaches or therapists. What's the difference between them and you? If there's something I can do to make me feel better on the daily, I'm going to do it. For me, the big thing is being able to let go and just be yourself with what you know about yourself."

It's all translated. Luna feels like he's getting closer to the best version of himself and finding joy with the ball at his feet.

The No. 10 position has changed immeasurably over the years. Luna knows there is precisely one man on this planet allowed to play it the way he grew up understanding it. Yes, he's in MLS and, no, it's not Diego Luna. His respect for Lionel Messi is tangible.

"The game's changing," he says. "It's not not where you can just be a 10 and sit around... unless you're Messi. He can definitely do that, but, unless you're him, in this age of the game, you have to do both sides of the ball."

Luna credits RSL boss Pablo Mastroeni for getting that point across. Mastroeni is no-nonsense. If you aren't working for the team, whether you're 18 or 45, Mastroeni has the perfect place for you: seated right next to him on the bench. That applies to Luna, despite all he can do creatively.

"The reason why Diego has been able to, at a young age, deliver the way he has has been because he's been able to lead himself," Mastroeni says of the midfielder. "It's very difficult for young players to understand that, while we create the environment and we have great coaches, the onus is on the individual to take the extra steps every day.

"Diego is one guy dialed in every video session and stays after and does his work every session. From a leadership stand point, that's the next bit. Having gone to January camp last year, he was a bit shocked. This year, it seems he felt deserving of it after winning MLS Young Player of the Year. My expectation is that he brings that leadership of the last couple years and that national team camp and becomes a leader in his own right. He's a fantastic leader himself, so how does he bring other players to that same type of level??

The midfielder doesn't mind that pressure or that role, to be fair. He knows that it sets a tone. If he's running and working and sliding all over the place, why the hell wouldn't everyone else do that too?

"If they're going to trust me with the ball, they're gonna work for me and run for me," he says. "It makes the team stronger mentally because it just allows everybody to trust each other, and it gives trust in me and gets me the ball, more people are enjoying playing with me more. It's a bunch of things."

Luna isn't known for work rate or pressing, though; he's known for the creativity. He's known for the moments where he plays a pass nobody else sees or the moments in which he beats a defender with a move that he makes looks so simple. Ironically, it's not those one-on-one moments Luna loves most. His idol growing up was Ronaldinho or some wizard of dribbling. Instead, it was Marco Reus, who established himself as one of game's premier modern attacking midfielders at Borussia Dortmund. Luna is excited to ask for his jersey this season when RSL play the LA Galaxy.

"I love his kind of vibe," Luna says. "I feel like I like to go with that. I like to create passes. I like to do dribble. My dribbling, sometimes it can be crazy, but sometimes it's simple. It's just dribbling, right? It's all about whatever works."

Luna doesn't have that stereotypical efficiency; he tries things. He'll hit a pass that, on the outside, doesn't always make sense. Sometimes it goes flying out of play, sometimes it's intercepted, but sometimes it falls right where he hopes it would. In 2024, that happened more often than ever before.

"As players, we want everything to work out, right? You want to be the guy that's balling non stop," he says. "You don't want to cause the team to work defensively because of your mistakes or stuff like that, but this is soccer. This is 90 minutes of non-stop, just go, go, go. One second you have the ball, the next second you don't, and this isn't going to be a game where you win 10-0. You just need that one.... everybody's gonna be like, 'He did it!', they're happy. I think that's just a mindset that a lot of creative players have: we have fun with the game have, and we're just gonna keep trying until it works."

The lasting image of this January camp might just be a selfie Luna took from his hospital bed Wednesday night. Nose broken, Luna sitting there with a little smirk anyway. No reason to be too serious, as his tattoo likely reminded him. He immediately made it his Instagram profile picture. That's the image of himself he wants the world to see first.

It's a poignant one. Luna, for all of his flash, isn't afraid of the nasty stuff. Pochettino surely learned a whole lot about Luna over these two weeks.

"I was very surprised he broke his nose, but I didn't want to say anything because he was bleeding," Pochettino told TNT after the match. "Not have too much drama, you know? I don't want to scare them. I said 'How do you feel?' and he said 'Please coach, let me keep playing, at least until halftime, and then I'll go out. Doctor gave me the OK.' Then an assist and we scored."

Added Pochettino with a laugh, "I said 'big balls.’ He showed great character."

There are few better ways to impress a coach. Every leader is looking for those that bring both quality and mentality. Luna showed both in his 45 minute runout on Wednesday night. Even as blood poured down his face, Luna raced around the field, pressing Costa Rica's backline. The assist, in some ways, was the cherry on top of a night that will definitely live in Pochettino's memory.

"He's a player that, for sure, that we are going to have a consideration for the future," he said.

In private conversations, Pochettino has already made it clear: he knows who Luna is, and he doesn't want to change him for anything. Luna's point was proven against Costa Rica - all it takes is one. There are few young players in the USMNT pool better at providing that one than Luna. Pochettino now believes that and, more importantly, Luna does, too.

"He just kind of told me that he knows who I am and knows how I play," Luna says of Pochettino. "He wants me to express myself. He doesn't want me to hide. He wants me to put me in the best position for me to showcase myself, to be that guy, to create chances for the team, to have fun and be a playmaker. He wants me to make stuff happen, and he's allowing me to have the freedom to be able to do that."

The hard part often isn't getting to where you want to go; it's staying there. Even harder is going further. That's what Luna wants. This isn't the best version of him, he says. If it is, then something went wrong. The USMNT is a very real possibility, and March camp is just around the corner. There won't be many games between now and then as the MLS season gears up but, even as he heads back to Real Salt Lake's preseason, that has to be on his mind.

At RSL, there will be more expectations than ever before, too. With the losses of Chicho Arango, Andres Gomez and Anderson Julio, RSL has now lost each of its top three scorers from 2024. Fourth on that list was Luna, who will now be tasked with doing so much more in MLS this season.

"You don't sugarcoat these things," Luna says. "Like there is pressure there, that's what it is, that's how life is, that's what this job is. For me, it's exciting, it's something that you like. That's the type of sh*t that I want. I want to be this guy that people are relying on and make them know they're right."

Luna is big at betting on himself, and he's putting more of it together now. All the tattoos, the flicked on passes, the hours on that practice field, it's all led up to this. Luna is going to be Luna, because that's gotten him this far. And, in the moments where it gets to be a bit much, like, say, when he sees a smashed up nose in the mirror over these next few days, he'll have that reminder on his leg. "Why so serious?"

Luna is having fun. So should everyone getting to watch his rise. Soccer can still provide a little bit of magic every once in a while, especially if you don't take it too seriously. Luna sure doesn't. That's what makes him him, and he isn't changing for anybody.