Whirlwind Wes: U.S.’s McKennie on Navigating Juventus Rumors and Keeping His Place

His summer includes a stop at home with his Serie A club, which is in a bit of a transition period but still has him in its plans entering a vital season.

Weston McKennie vacations like a man who can’t stay still, which won’t come as much of a shock to those who follow the exuberant U.S. midfielder. He had only three weeks off following a season that was, perhaps, the most difficult of his career and ahead of a campaign that could be the most important. But instead of rest, there was restlessness.

“I traveled. I did all the things younger people do. Trained a lot and saw my family. So it was a summer,” he said.

His itinerary: Jamaica, Miami, his hometown of Dallas, Turks and Caicos, Toronto, Monaco and Portugal. In three weeks.

“I went to a lot of places, to be fair,” he told Sports Illustrated this week.

The question now is how much movement there might be in his immediate future.

McKennie, who turns 24 next month, is entering his third season at Juventus and is part of the squad that’s scheduled to contest friendlies against Chivas de Guadalajara (Friday in Las Vegas), Barcelona (July 26 in Dallas, of all places) and then Real Madrid (July 30 in Los Angeles). But Juve’s first U.S. tour since 2018 comes at a somewhat awkward time for both club and player. The Bianconeri are looking to rebound from their first season without a trophy since ’10–11, and McKennie has been the subject of multiple transfer rumors as manager Massimiliano Allegri overhauls the squad.

McKennie said he’s excited to play next Tuesday at the Cotton Bowl. It’ll be his first game in Dallas as a pro.

“My whole crew is coming,” he said.

McKennie will help lead the U.S. at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar :: Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire/Imago Images

But Turin is home now, and after reported links in recent months to the likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Roma, West Ham United and Atlético Madrid, among others, McKennie said he’s committed to demonstrating his value to Allegri while accepting the fact that movement and uncertainty are part of soccer at its highest level. McKennie’s contract runs another three seasons.

“I learned back whenever I was leaving [FC] Dallas that soccer is a big business,” he said. “There’s no real feelings tied to it. So whenever you’re playing at these big clubs, you develop this hunger and this competitiveness, because if you’re not performing, these big clubs, they can go out and anyone would love to play for them. So they can go out and with the snap of a finger, your job’s taken.”

So far this summer, Juve has said goodbye to the likes of Giorgio Chiellini, Álvaro Morata, Federico Bernardeschi, Paulo Dybala and Matthijs de Ligt. French World Cup winner Paul Pogba, Argentine veteran Ángel Di María and Brazilian defender Gleison Bremer are among the newcomers.

“It’s definitely a dog-eat-dog world,” McKennie continued. “It’s one of those things where you guys are all friends and cool and everything outside of the pitch, but as soon as you’re on the pitch, it’s like, ‘Yo, like, I love you, but you’re trying to take my position, and I’m trying to take yours.’ That’s how it is. It’s not out of hate or anything. It’s a big respect thing.”

Allegri, who managed Juve to five consecutive Serie A titles and two Champions League finals before a two-year sabbatical (he returned to replace Andrea Pirlo last year), conveyed his respect for McKennie this month. The midfielder had a roller coaster 2021–22. His season began with his dismissal from the U.S. national team during the September World Cup qualifying window, and after rebounding with a couple of goals in late October, he was knocked out with a knee problem. A run of starts in January then preceded the February foot fracture that sidelined him all the way until the Serie A finale. McKennie said toward the start of June’s national team camp he had “expected” to return much earlier, but “it didn’t pan out that way.” While injured, he was fined €50,000 for misreading a schedule and showing up an hour late to training (that revelation came via goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny’s Canal+ podcast). McKennie concluded the campaign with four goals in 29 appearances.

Nevertheless, Allegri has said he’s expecting big things from the American this season.

“McKennie will have the opportunity to play a great season at Juventus this year,” Allegri said a couple of weeks ago, adding in Thursday’s prematch press conference, “[McKennie] is probably the best American player playing in Europe. I think it’s very important for him to continue showing the high levels that he has at Juve.”

Asked whether Allegri’s earlier comments helped boost McKennie’s confidence or comfort, the midfielder said, “I think with any player in general, it’s not over until it’s over. So honestly, anything can happen in the transfer market that would even surprise you. Sometimes it even surprises me.”

The window will remain open through August. Juventus opens its Serie A campaign Aug. 15 against Sassuolo.

“I may be set right now where I’m here, but maybe two weeks down the road I might be having a crappy preseason, and they’re just like, ‘We don’t find you a Juventus player anymore,’” McKennie said. “I’m very calm when it comes to things like that. And I know the one thing that I pride myself on is that I can always say that I give 100%. So I’m not worried about whether or not I’m going to perform good or not.”

The standards to which McKennie holds himself are his own.

“Any player always wants to train good, always wants to put their best foot forward, because it’s not even so much about a transfer or anything like that. It’s more so, you want to play. As a player you want minutes. You want to play. You want to compete. You want to feel like you’re part of the team where you’re having an influence on winning games,” McKennie explained.

“I always try to put my best foot forward. And that’s not to secure whether I’m going to stay at Juventus or not. It’s more so because I just want to win. I want to show what I can do.”

McKennie’s timing has been somewhat unfortunate. He arrived in Turin just as the Bianconeri’s dominance was waning. Their unprecedented nine-year run atop Serie A ended in 2021, and despite defeating Atalanta in the ’21 Coppa Italia final (McKennie played the full 90 minutes), Pirlo was fired. Three months later, Cristiano Ronaldo departed for Manchester. Juventus went on to finish fourth in Serie A, a hefty 16 points out of first, and lose in the Champions League’s round of 16 to Villarreal.

“Our duty is to win this year,” Allegri said Thursday.

McKennie is expected to remain at Juventus despite another summer’s worth of transfer rumors :: Massimiliano Ferraro/NurPhoto/Imago Images

“I think the vibe is the same vibe that Juventus has every season, even before I came here,” McKennie said. “We have a winning mentality. We play games to win. We expect ourselves to win the season as well. So every day in training, you can tell that we’re pushing ourselves and that we’re training with intensity. I’m sure every other club is training with intensity, because everyone goes in with the mentality to win it. But it’s a little bit more here. I feel like that we’re pushing to get back to where we belong.”

The pressure McKennie puts on himself, the expectations at a club like Juventus and the “dog-eat-dog” world he described can erode a player’s energy and confidence. Or they can be channeled for his benefit. McKennie will play in his first World Cup long before Juve’s 2022–23 destiny is determined. The U.S. opens against Wales on Nov. 21 in Al Rayyan, Qatar, and McKennie will be far from the only American who’s made a recent move or spent the summer surrounded by speculation. It’s been an active period. The spotlight is bright and the churn is constant. But McKennie said this week that he and his compatriots intend to weaponize it.

“It definitely is different from 10 years ago in U.S. soccer, but I think that’s something that has allowed the U.S. national team recently to be successful. We have players that are playing at clubs where they’re expected to win. So you develop this winning mentality. You develop this type of hunger, this type of competitiveness that you may not get anywhere else, and it’s something that we all bring it back to the national team,” McKennie said.

“With the national team, we don’t go there and just have fun and just joke around and everything,” he continued. “Players are tackling players, and players are competing to win small-sided games and to win the ball back, or to just win overall. So I think that’s something that has definitely helped U.S. soccer in the past two, three, four years—is just players playing and being exposed to these type of mentalities, these type of clubs and experiences.”