Weston McKennie: The American Midfield Maverick

Weston McKennie is an American professional soccer player who currently plays as a midfielder for Juventus Torino and the United States national team. He began his career with FC Dallas in Major League Soccer (MLS) before moving to Schalke 04 in the Bundesliga in 2016. In 2020, he moved to Juventus,  a professional football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. McKennie is known for his versatility, physicality, and technical ability on the pitch.

 

Birth and Professional Career

Weston McKennie was born on August 28, 1998, in Fort Lewis, Washington. He currently plays for Leeds United in the Premier League and for the United States national team. He is on loan from Juventus Torino Serie A.

McKennie is a versatile player who can be used in midfield in a variety of positions, mostly as a box-to-box player or as a defensive midfielder in depth.

McKennie’s professional career began in the Bundesliga, a professional association football league in Germany,  with Schalke 04, where he had previously played in the junior system. He became a regular in the 2017/18 season, appearing in 25 games in all competitions. After three years at the club, McKennie was loaned to Italian champions Juventus Torino, where he received a permanent contract in March 2021. In 2020 he won the Supercoppa Italiana with Juventus and in 2020-21 the Coppa Italia with Juventus.

McKennie was a representative for the U.S. youth and senior national teams. He made his debut for the senior national team in 2017, and since then his team was runner-up in the 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup and champions of the 2019-20 CONCACAF Nations League. In 2020, he was named the best male player in the United States by U.S. Soccer.

 

Origins

Although he was born in Fort Lewis, Washington, he is a permanent resident of Little Elm, Texas.

When McKennie was six and nine years old, he moved with his family to Kaiserslautern, Germany, as his father was an Air Force officer stationed at Ramstein Air Base.

In 2004, McKennie moved back to the United States and began playing soccer again for FC Phoenix Otterbach. McKennie spent seven years in the Major League Soccer development program at FC Dallas before joining the Schalke squad in 2016.

FC Dallas’ reserve club North Texas SC competed in USL League One after his move to Schalke. Although McKennie signed a National Letter of Intent in February 2016 to play for the College of Virginia Cavaliers, he decided to turn down the scholarship and turn pro instead.

 

Weston McKennie’s Expertise

As a soccer player, McKennie is known for his flexibility. During his time at Schalke, McKennie was used in a variety of roles, including as a striker, in the center of defense, on the wing, and even as a defender. He also played sometimes in midfield. However, he has the most experience in the defensive midfielder position, playing in the box-to-box or deep.

During his time at Juventus Turin, he was used in many different midfield roles, including wide midfielder, defensive midfielder, and even more attacking central midfielder, called “mezzala” in Italian soccer terminology.

The most notable aspects of McKennie’s game are his defensive skills and work rate, as well as his ability to win back lost possession. In addition, his passing ability allows him to control the flow of the game and move the ball forward from deep positions in midfield.

According to Alberto Mauro of Il Messaggero, McKennie has been compared to former Juventus midfielders Edgar Davids and Arturo Vidal due to his ball-winning qualities, positional play, tactical intelligence, goal-scoring ability from midfield, and his ability to charge into the penalty area late. However, McKennie’s technical ability has been called in need of improvement.

 

The Family Life of Weston McKennie

Raising a player of Kenny McKennie’s caliber requires a group of very remarkable people to take on the task. These people are related to each other.

Father

It should come as no surprise that Kenny’s father has always been there for his son in times of need. It must be a blessing for McKennie to have him as a father.

Mother

Tina is the player’s mother, and her name is a familiar one. When it comes to important family matters, she is the one her husband turns to when he needs her help. When the options for her husband’s transfer to the military came up, it was actually Tina who decided that Germany would be a better choice than Alaska. Tina also introduced young McKennie to the head coach of FC Phoenix Otterbach, where McKennie’s soccer career took off.

The famous soccer player has only two siblings. These are an older brother named John and a sister who is rather unremarkable. His brother is a member of the fire department and has an interest in real estate investments.

 

Trivia

You will find that Kenny is a person you would like to have as a friend. The soccer prodigy has qualities and interpersonal skills that make him attractive and make it easy for him to make friends.

He is a cheerful person who loves to cook and speaks several languages with relative ease.

In addition, he is a master in the art of wild partying. He is a passionate advocate of fairness and abhors oppression, and has been known to wear an armband that reads “Justice for George” in memory of the late George Floyd.

The Texas native also has no inhibitions about revealing intimate details of his personal life. However, he is aware that he has to keep a low profile and therefore does so only sporadically.

 

Weston McKennie Lifestyle

Imagine the following: You are a professional athlete playing in one of the top five leagues in the world, and you have signed an advertising contract with Adidas. Your annual salary is 2.95 million euros. Apart from a trip to Mars as part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX project, what could be more expensive than your purchasing power?

He’s only 22 years old, but he has a net worth of 3 million euros and can buy practically anything he sets his mind to. Whatever you can imagine, we have it.

The only problem is that he does not have enough free time to use his money. Soccer is a game that requires dedication, and Kenny has almost a decade left on his contract to play the game and, of course, make more money.

Final words

McKennie’s journey serves as an inspiration to young American players, proving that with hard work and determination, they too can reach the highest levels of international soccer.

 

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