Weston McKennie is in Year 5 at Juventus and, fueled by “haters,” after being told to leave, he is thriving yet again. He is comfortable in Italy, “just chillin’, playing soccer, living life,” as he said after a recent training session. In some ways, as Juve’s second-longest-tenured non-goalkeeper, the 26-year-old American has become a fixture at Serie A’s winningest club.
So, I asked him: Do you feel like a veteran?
“Um. Ehhh,” McKennie began. “I don’t know.” Then he laughed. “Obviously,” he said with a cheeky smile, “you don’t feel like a veteran after every summer, coming back and having to prove yourself again.”
McKennie has been proving himself, or at least trying, ever since he arrived in Turin one day before his 22nd birthday. He remembers the critics; “they told me that Juve was too big for me, and that I would never play,” he recently said. In reality, the club wasn’t too big; he did play; but then he went to England on loan for five months, and when he returned to Italy in 2023, he didn’t have a locker. He’d lost his jersey number and his parking space. He was forced to change in a separate locker room alongside academy kids — and nearly forced to find a new club.
He responded with the best season of his career. Juventus responded by exiling him again. This past summer, “I was still able to use the locker room, and had a parking spot,” McKennie says with a chuckle. But he was training late in the afternoon, separately from most of the squad, with several other players whom Juve was trying to offload.
“It was difficult,” McKennie says, now in an earnest tone. “Very difficult, to be fair.”
“But,” he quickly adds, “nothing that I haven’t faced before.”
So, as transfer rumors swirled, the fun-loving Texan put his proverbial head down and worked. He earned a place in new coach Thiago Motta’s plans. He broke into the starting lineup. Ever since scoring on his very first start, against PSV in the Champions League, he’s rarely left.
And he rarely leaves because Motta, mere months after discarding him, now trusts McKennie to play almost anywhere. He has been a right back, wing back and left back. In midfield, he has been a roaming attacker, reliable defender and both simultaneously. “Weston can do everything,” Motta raved after a Champions League win over Manchester City in December. “It’s a fortune to have players of this quality.”
For a self-described “midfielder at heart,” of course, it’s also “a double-edged sword,” McKennie explains. “Obviously I would love to be able to [play every week] in midfield.” But playing elsewhere beats not playing at all.
So, he has grown to embrace, or at least accept, the utility role. “It’s more so that I have to embrace it,” he says. He doesn’t necessarily want to, but he also knows that what his friends jokingly tell him is true: “Dude, you’re only doing it to yourself — because you’re playing in all these positions, and you’re performing.”
How McKennie won back Juventus and his coach
The alternative, in the summer of 2023 or 2024, would have been for McKennie to accept that he’d become a casualty of soccer’s cutthroat business. He spoke with Motta shortly after the Brazilian-born Italian coach took the Juve job in June; McKennie was under contract through 2025, but “I was told that I was not part of the project, and was told that I would be training by myself if I decided to stay,” he says.
“Obviously,” McKennie recalls, “I was a bit upset, because it’s never good hearing that you’re not wanted.” In retrospect, he wonders how much the physical distance between player and coach colored their interactions. They spoke by phone, not face to face, because McKennie was with the U.S. men’s national team at Copa América. “I think he might’ve got the wrong impression of me over the phone,” McKennie says. And perhaps that impression was impacted by what McKennie calls his “past hiccups,” “past stories” that once spread uncontrollably across the internet — and suggested immaturity.
“Not knowing someone, and then just reading all of that, or going off of ear-to-mouth-to-ear, you would also probably think to yourself, like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure about this guy,’” McKennie admits.
“But obviously I’ve grown, and I’ve matured,” he continues. He explained that to Motta. And more importantly, he showed it.
He showed it day after day, even after Motta said publicly that he and a handful of other Juve players “have to find a new solution and new club as soon as possible.” He’d train with the outcasts — Wojciech Szczęsny, Federico Chiesa, Arthur Melo and others. They were left out of squads for preseason friendlies. Most ultimately left the club, either on loan or permanently.
But McKennie kept plugging away.
A couple of days prior to the commencement of Serie A, Motta reinstated him in the starting lineup and publicly praised McKennie as “a valuable and effective player.”
“Upon meeting me in person and observing my personality, work ethic, and character, I believe [Motta] truly grasped my essence as both a player and an individual,” McKennie remarks.
Following this, he extended his contract through 2026 a week later.
Moreover, McKennie had to regain the support of Juventus fans who had turned against him. This was a bit disheartening for him. “I have been here for a long time, giving my all, and performing for you all,” McKennie reflects.
However, he understood that the only solution was to continue giving his best. In a crucial Champions League match in Germany, during his fourth start and with Juventus down to 10 men, he made a remarkable play where he chased down a Leipzig counterattack, made a crucial tackle, and initiated the sequence that led to Juve’s winning goal.
Motta later commended McKennie, stating, “That play encapsulates Weston’s character perfectly. It holds more value than a goal. I am delighted to have Weston on the team; he is making a significant contribution.”
McKennie’s run in the Juventus lineup was briefly interrupted by injury and fatigue. However, he managed to find his way back into the team, starting eight consecutive games within a span of 36 days after scoring off the bench against Man City.
Acknowledging the demanding schedule, McKennie admits that the constant grind can be overwhelming, especially without any time off during the winter. Despite being well-compensated for his efforts, he explains the lack of extended breaks compared to other sports like basketball or American football.
Since the 2022 World Cup, McKennie has been enduring a hectic schedule, which is expected to continue. After competing in the Champions League, Coppa Italia, and Serie A for the next four months, Juventus will participate in the Club World Cup in the U.S., which clashes with the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the USMNT’s final competition before the 2026 World Cup.
Regarding his participation in either tournament, McKennie suggests that he will likely prioritize the Club World Cup with Juventus over the Gold Cup with the U.S. team due to the conflicting schedules.
As uncertainties loom over his position for the upcoming match against Napoli, McKennie humorously remarks, “I’m usually the guy who is informed of where I need to be, and I’ll be there.” following sentence:
The cat chased the mouse around the room.
The mouse was chased around the room by the cat.